


Wyvern Squadron I: Dawn

by GirlCreator



Series: Star Wars: Wyvern Squadron [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Fusion of Star Wars Legends and Disney Canon, Gen, Original Character(s), Other, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Post-Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Pre-Star Wars: A New Hope, Pre-Star Wars: Rebels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2020-04-12 14:39:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 21
Words: 63,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19134106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GirlCreator/pseuds/GirlCreator
Summary: Set five years after the formation of the Galactic Empire, Meena Aryss, a young Miralukan woman with a quiet distaste for the Empire, finds herself torn from her steady, but not necessarily safe, life and thrust into a growing resistance to the Empire's rule over the galaxy. She and several new like-minded compatriots form Wyvern Squadron as founding members of a nascent rebellion. Danger, friendship, and even a possibility of liberation await the members of Wyvern Squadron as they swear to take on the Empire's tyranny.***Based on a Star Wars Saga Edition campaign my friends and I play!





	1. Preface

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Star Wars: Wyvern Squadron is based on the Star Wars Saga Edition my friends and I play! This story is a collaborative effort by all of us playing, but our wonderful game master (@ZenithSloth on Twitter) is responsible for much of what happens! I'm just doing my best to transcribe our adventures into a narrative story.
> 
> I play the narrator, Meena Aryss. Lyrilis Vann is played by @MothPunk, Fry is played by @samuraiflamenco, Hubri Vexru is played by @ash_leyherring, Gordon and Strahd are played by our friend Aidan, and Salak is played by our friend Cameron.
> 
> We've all been having fun tell this story together and I hope you enjoy!

I am writing my story not as my own, but as the story of Wyvern Squadron, so future generations can remember the cruelty of the Empire, the heroism of the soldiers and friends we lost, and the courage of the Rebels who refused to watch idly as our Galaxy was threatened.

Learn from this your own courage, as we learned our own, so we may never need another Rebellion.

-Meena Aryss


	2. Part One

**Tyrants Inspire**


	3. Sel Zonn Station

I walked off the small, junky freighter I had a habit of calling my own and onto the loading dock of the out-of-the-way space station this particular client had insisted the drop happen on. Sel Zonn Station. The station orbited Brentaal IV, a Core World whose only importance was a major hyperspace junction. I hated flying into the Core Worlds. I could never relax there, even if I had spent the first decade and a half of my life on the centermost planet of the galaxy.

Every time I thought about Coruscant as I remembered it as a kid, I had to remind myself it would never be like that again. The Empire was there now. The whole planet would be draped in red and black. No doubt my home had already been destroyed, likely my whole neighborhood. The Temple, too.

I walked through the station, scouting out the dock where I would drop the cargo later that day. The client wanted secrecy. I guessed he was one of those anxious types, or he just didn’t want to show his face.

The people on the station seemed generic enough. Space stations attract the same kind of people, no matter what part of the galaxy you find yourself in. There’s always the transients and the shady figures that would have frightened me as a kid, but I got used to those types on Nar Shaddaa. They rarely tried anything, since they knew they were in as much danger as I was. There were always spacers, pilots, and assorted types that didn’t exactly fit under “transient”, only because they were often cleaner, but barely, and they at least had a ship to call their own. I guess I fit there, in that category. Then there were the few people on the station who were completely average citizens. People just moving from one planet to another on passenger shuttles. Those were the people to watch out for. They were skittish and quick to run to authorities if something seemed out of place. Those days, the authorities were stormtroopers.

The station itself was ordinary. The job I was running was ordinary. I didn’t mind the mundane nature of my life, because at least it meant I was living, but I couldn’t help but notice the boredom. Well, it was less boredom those days. It became frustration all too often, as I remembered how I had had my life taken from me. I tried to manage the frustration before it became anger, but I struggled.

I flew in a little early for the drop. I was quite happy when the navicomputer spat out a shorter route than I expected. I never knew if I would get stopped by a blockade or checkpoint along the way. Not that the Empire cared about the particular cargo I was hauling. They were only looking for weapons and anything deemed anti-Imperial. They were worried about insurgency. It was becoming tougher to get things through those checkpoints. Anything could be “anti-Imperial”. Didn’t help how I looked, being Miralukan. I was instantly suspicious to any Imperial military head who wanted a nice, shiny promotion. My connection to the Force was suspect to the new Empire, who knew their influence on the galaxy was still fragile. They never found anything on me, though, and I never tried anything stupid. I wouldn’t have dared risk my life like that.

I didn’t realize how far I had wandered until I heard a Rodian barking at me, through a slight accent. “Hey, blindfold! You lost? These are private docks!” He was from Hutt Space, his accent gave it away. His large, bug-like eyes narrowed at me, waiting for a response.

“Sorry, just having a quick tour around this station, I’ll be out of your hair,” I said, turning around.

“I don’t have hair! Get out of here!” He shooed me out.

* * *

 

I showed up to the drop spot, large crate in tow. The crate reeked of animal. I wasn’t supposed to know what kind was in there, but I had my suspicions. Likely a Nexu. They were a popular fad in some sick gladiator shows around the Underworld. I could’ve just used the Force to see into the crate, but I preferred ignorance. I was getting tired of hauling live animals, and I had a part of me that wanted to “lose” the creature in a nice, comfy home where it would live peacefully. However, I knew the price of these creatures on the black market and I didn’t feel like owing my boss that much plus interest for my good intentions.

I waited with the crate in the empty dock. I played with the ends of my hair, tied up in a ponytail that was getting too long. An anxious habit of mine. The ends of my hair were splitting from all the times I had rubbed them out of compulsion. No matter how many times I did jobs like that one, there was always something in me that felt uncomfortable. Maybe it was the innocent animal involved this time, or maybe I just wasn’t cut out for the work.

I couldn’t quit, though. I didn’t know where I would go without employment. I would probably just starve. Not to mention my bosses wouldn’t have been happy. I’d heard rumors about pilots that quit on them suddenly turning up with blaster bolts through their heads. Nobody truly knew who ran DeNav Corporation. Some said it was a puppet for the Hutt Cartel, others just said the executives didn’t want their names attached to the business and quietly collected their cash.

A ship descended into the dock through the airlock on the ceiling. The ship was in rough shape, almost worse than the one DeNav lent me. I could barely even tell what model it was supposed to be. Something Corellian, barely. It was likely a throwaway ship, in case something went wrong. No legitimate papers on it therefore no traces back to the person or group who owned it. It was common practice amongst gangsters.

The ship landed in the dock, and a human man walked off of it. He had dark black hair and blue eyes that felt unnatural like they had been artificially colored. His face was handsome by conventional standards, I supposed.

“You got the crate?” the man asked, approaching me. His voice was higher than I had expected, but I could hear him attempting to make it sound deeper.

I put my hand on the crate. “Right here. You got the credits?”

“Physical, like your boss requested.” He handed me a stack of credit chips. I counted them, just to make sure. “So what’s the eye covering for? You blind? I’m sure you’ve got a story,” he started, flicking his fingers at my face. He was full of himself, I could tell.

“I’ve got no story. I’m just a pilot.” I was a little busy counting, but besides that, I really didn’t want to chat with an egotistical gangster, nor be touched by one.

“How do you fly with that thing on? Can you see?” He asked, getting a little too close to me.

“None of your business.” I shrugged him away from me.

His face scowled with annoyance. “Keep your secrets, then.” He started pushing the crate over to his ship.

“Hey, wait,” I called out. He whipped his head over his shoulder. “You’re a thousand short. You trying to pull something?” I asked.

“Whoops, my mistake,” he replied, flashing a smile he likely thought was suave, but I didn’t really care for his attempts. He handed me the remaining credits. I counted the stack again. He’d already tried to swindle me once. I watched him push the crate onto his ship, and take off. Another successful cargo drop, another paycheck.

Once I was sure I was alone, I split the credits into two piles, taking my pay out of the stack. I thought about it for a moment and put ten more credits into my pile to cover a drink or two later. I would just say the client ripped me off. It happened all the time.

* * *

 

I dreamt as I slept that night, curled up, somewhat uncomfortably, in the pilot’s seat of my freighter. The dream was so vivid and bright, it reminded me of the Force dreams I had when I was a child and my mind was more active. I saw my parents’ faces again from the window of a passenger shuttle, them calling out my name in voices I could no longer remember. The shuttle took off, the ship carrying me away to Hutt Space while my parents stayed behind to be slaughtered. I’d had this dream a lot before. Sometimes I’d look around and my parents were on the shuttle with me, and I would feel safe again. Sometimes I’d hear the screams I never truly heard that day, but that I’m sure had happened. Sometimes I’d be killed with them, shot by the clone troopers the galaxy once trusted.

Most of the time, though, I’d wake up and I’d be alone again. And, most of the time, I wouldn’t be able to sleep anymore.

But this dream didn’t end like it normally did. The scene shifted from the cold shuttle, and I sensed figures I’d never sensed before, huddled in a group in the hallway of a ship with an interior of pure white. The walls were almost blinding. The faces of the people around me were blurry and their figures slightly obscured, like they weren’t completely present. The Force around them was strong, each one feeling unique. The strongest was a girl, directly across from me. A blur of purple and black, fiery, but in no way malicious. I felt comfortable.


	4. New Acquaintances

I went to the cantina on the station, a little earlier in the day than I would normally visit a bar, embezzled credits in my pocket. I had some time to kill before I was scheduled to jump back and a drink wouldn’t hurt.

The cantina was quieter in the late morning than it would’ve been in the evening, but there was still a number of patrons. Two nonhumans, a Chiss with uncomfortably red eyes and a Herglic with black and white markings and a cybernetic arm, sat at a booth in the far corner of the cantina. They whispered amongst themselves. A Zabrak woman sat near the window, staring out of it intently. The neon lights on the wall made the tattoos on her face glow red. A few other people sat at tables, drinking or socializing, but nobody seemed to be of interest.

There was only one other person sitting at the bar. She was the most intriguing, in my mind. She wore a black hood attached to a short-sleeved jacket, purple bangs peeking out from under the hood. Her bangs fell over where her eyes should be. It struck me as odd at first, until I sensed the Force on her. Strong, too. She turned to look at me briefly. She wore a black blindfold--much darker than my own--with white markings on it that I couldn’t figure out. She was Miraluka. Like me. My attention was absorbed by her, distracting me from my original task of ordering a drink. She looked away from me and sipped from the glass in her hand.

As a rule, I tried to stay out of the way of other Force-sensitives whenever I ran into them. It was safer for both of us that way. She was different, though, being Miralukan, and she was more intriguing than most. I began debating whether I should start a conversation.

The decision was made for me when a woman ran into the cantina, frantically. Her large, curly hair bounced as she dashed in, running from something. She ran straight for the Chiss and Herglic in the corner of the room. She appeared to be begging to them, but I was just out of earshot of her frenzied words. I began to assume she had some kind of business with them when a group of stormtroopers ran in, blaster rifles in hand and trained on the woman.

“Stop right there!” one of the stormtroopers commanded through his helmet.

I realized this wasn’t the kind of situation I was itching to find myself in. Better to leave trouble to the ones who caused it. I barely made it out of my seat when I heard blaster fire and screaming patrons behind me.

Stupidly, I ran for the door.

“Hey, get her!” a stormtrooper yelled, and I found myself caught by the arm by a stormtrooper standing outside the cantina. I felt my heart beating in my chest, scared. The blood in my ears pulsed, louder than I’d ever felt it before. I freed my arm from the stormtrooper’s grip and, without a thought passing my brain, pulled my blaster from its holster on my leg and shot the trooper through the helmet. He fell to the ground and my body went stiff with realization. As far as the stormtroopers cared, I was a conspirator with that woman.

I was shaken from my daze as the window next to me shattered. I shielded my head from the falling glass with my arms. I looked up and saw the Zabrak woman from before with a blaster raised. I felt panic set in as I waited for her to shoot me. She fired, and I heard the clattering of plastoid armor as a stormtrooper fell dead behind me. I gave her a quick nod of gratitude and jumped through the now-broken window back into the cantina, blaster in hand.

The Miralukan girl jumped up onto a table in a blur of purple and black and with a mesmerizing flourish, ignited a lightsaber pike. She pulled her hood off her head, revealing messy hair that was half deep brown roots and half purple ends that were fading out, as if she hadn’t colored them in a while. The handle of her pike was almost as tall as she was and the blade was a bright white. “Leave the woman alone!” she yelled.

“She’s a Jedi, kill her!” the trooper echoed in their comms.

A Jedi, I thought to myself, she’s really a Jedi. I thought all the Jedi were dead. It made sense some survived, but I had never seen proof of it until that moment.

She jumped down from the table and became a flurry of white from her blade and from the stormtroopers’ armor that surrounded her. The Zabrak and I picked off the stormtroopers smart enough to not fight a Jedi. Blaster fire came from the Chiss and Herglic’s corner of the bar, and I hoped they weren’t with the stormtroopers.

The fight ended as quickly as it had started. As the room settled, I got a new sense for my surroundings. A droid wearing a brown, wide-brimmed hat had entered the cantina since the fight started, wielding a blaster that looked older than all of us in the room combined. He appeared to have been on our side of the fight, but I still watched him carefully. Slugthrowers were still deadly, despite their antiquity.

The woman from before limped up to the Jedi and whispered to her. The Jedi spoke up, relaying the woman’s message, “Those of us who defended this woman, she wants us to follow her. She said she could offer us protection, since the authorities will be after us now.”

“Including me?” the droid asked. His voice had a twang to it, like old spacers in holovids. It was odd to hear an accent like that coming from a droid. His voice chip must be busted, I thought. He needed a replacement.

“Yes, including you,” the Jedi said. She put her shoulder under the woman to support her. The woman began hobbling slowly out of the cantina, using the Jedi girl as a crutch.

As we left, the old human owner of the cantina raced out behind us. “At least clean up your mess! This kind of situation is bad for business!”

“Sorry, maybe next time,” the Herglic said. I realized he and the Chiss had joined our procession through the station, though it didn’t help my nerves about them. Including the woman leading us, our group was seven people: the Miralukan Jedi, the Zabrak who had saved me, the droid with the bad voice chip, the Herglic with the robotic arm, and the Chiss, and myself.

We didn’t have to go far. The woman lead us to a well-hidden and heavily-locked room on the space station that she had clearly been camping out in for a while. A sloppily made bed sat against one wall and a workstation sat against the other, the desk a mess of scribbled notes and equipment like a spy would use: radios, comms, datapads no doubt encrypted three times over. A large blaster rifle sat in the corner of the room.

The woman limped to the chair by the workstation and pointed to a med kit on a table behind me. I got a better look at her injuries now that I wasn't in danger of being shot. She was bleeding through her shirt and there was a sizable blaster wound on her arm. Whatever she went through, it was pretty tough. “Would you grab that for me?” she asked, her voice still hoarse. I retrieved the kit and handed it to her. She began working on her ankle, which must’ve been the source of her limp. I winced as I watched her inject a syringe into the joint. “Ah, much better,” she sighed.

“What’s your deal here?” the Zabrak asked. “This is a lot of equipment.”

The woman looked up from her amateur medical procedure. Her loosely-curly, dark brown hair bobbed up and down with her head’s movements. She had sepia colored skin and warm brown eyes. “Well, to start, my name is Maya. I work for a politician named Bail Organa, if you’ve heard of him. He’s a big deal on his home planet of Alderaan and in the Imperial Senate,” she started. I couldn’t say I recognized the name, but I purposely isolated myself from news of Imperial politics. Unless it affected my job, I didn’t care much. The news only depressed me those days. “Between us, he’s not a fan of the Empire. I’m not, either. I was gathering information for the senator when things went bad. The Empire knows my face now, so I have to lie low.”

“Let me guess, you want us to finish the job?” the Zabrak asked. She was tall, almost a head taller than me, and her aura was intensely imposing, even more so than the Herglic in some ways.

“Exactly! You get it! I just needed to pick up a datapad from a gangster here named Switch. It was the last piece I needed before I could report back and call this recon mission complete. You all in?” she asked, a little too excitedly.

I would admit that I was excited. I had never thought at length about a real rebellion effort against the Empire. It crossed my mind from time to time, but it always seemed futile. In the short five years of its existence, the Empire had already made itself into a machine that wouldn’t be easily broken, but that didn’t stop me from thinking. We could take down the Empire, even bring back the Republic, I thought. Part of me knew it would never be like it was before, but I wanted to dream.

“I’m in,” the Jedi said, her voice resolute.

“Yeah, I’m in, too. Got no better jobs,” the Zabrak agreed.

I spoke up, a smirk on my face, “Count me in. I’ll take a shot at the Empire.”

“Does this job pay credits?” the droid asked.

“Of course,” Maya promised.

“I’m in, then.” I wondered briefly what a droid needed with credits.

The Chiss spoke up, “We’ll both sign on, too.”

“Great! Why don’t you all introduce yourselves while I contact a few people on the, uh, change of plans.” She turned to the workstation on her desk and began working.

I cringed at the thought of introductions. I wasn’t a fan of forced conversation. The droid spoke up first, perhaps a little too eager, “Howdy. The name’s Fry. I hope to make your acquaintance.” He wore a belt buckle and holster, both odd fashion choices for a droid, though any fashion for a droid should be considered 'odd'.

“You actually use that thing?” the Chiss pointed to Fry’s ancient slugthrower on his hip.

“Why, of course I do, what else would I use?”

“Maybe something with an energy pack,” the Zabrak quipped. “My name is Hubri Vexru. I’m not a fan of the Empire either, so you can trust me for this job.” Her hair was shaved down on the sides, revealing pointed, well-kept horns. The hair she did have sat tied into braids on the top of her head. Her skin was a khaki color, with dark tattoos on her face, making her expressions appear more severe.

I spoke up, giving the bare minimum, “My name’s Meena Aryss.” I thought for a second before adding, “I’m not blind. I’m Miralukan, like the Jedi.”

“Ex-Jedi,” she interjected. “The Jedi Order is gone, in case you missed the massacre five years ago.” I didn’t think her words were meant to be hostile, but I could tell she wanted distance between herself and the Jedi Order. “My name is Lyrilis Vann, and yeah, like she said, I’m Miralukan.” The oversized black jacket she wore seemed to swallow her small frame. She was shorter than I was, maybe by five or so inches, and thinner. The jacket made it hard to tell if her lean body was from malnutrition or exercise.

“Well, I guess it’s our turn,” the Chiss started. “I’m Salak, and this is my buddy, Gordon.”

“Does Gordon speak or…?” Hubri asked.

“Yes, I speak,” Gordon replied. His voice was deep and warbled, as if it wasn’t suited for speaking through air. He had large white spots on his obsidian face, and his whole body appeared slick with oil. “I just don’t say anything if I don’t have to.”

“He means he’s shy,” Salak laughed.

I could see the friendship between the two, but I couldn’t quite make out the nature of it. You didn’t normally see Chiss hanging out with anyone other than other Chiss, or maybe humans. I didn’t know what Salak’s goals were with this job. He had mentioned credits, but Chiss were notorious for siding with the Sith Empire throughout history. You can’t judge a man on the actions of a preconceived group, I thought, but it still seemed odd.

“Alright, you all ready to head off?” Maya chirped up. “I already made the arrangements. Switch knows you’ll be coming, so don’t worry about his reputation. He probably won’t shoot you!” Maya’s seemingly misplaced optimism was worrisome.

We shuffled out of Maya’s cramped room and began following her directions to the gangster’s hideout. We walked into the underlevels of the station, watching the patrons become less friendly looking as we descended. The condition of the station also degraded, slowly growing less and less kept. Grime and graffiti covered the walls, in some stretches signaling to us which gang thought they owned what part of the station.

“Anyone ever heard of this ‘Switch’?” Fry asked. His accent was still an oddity to me.

“I’ve dealt with plenty of gangsters before, but I’ve never heard of one named Switch,” Hubri replied.

“What about you, Jedi?” Salak asked. He had the accent of a Coruscanti like me, but I supposed now it was likely the accent of an Imperial. I didn’t like thinking about that too much.

“My name is Lyrilis,” she said, her voice flat. She acted standoffish, but I sensed she wasn’t being authentic. She must’ve been putting up a front around strangers. I tended to do the same. “I don’t make habits out of dealing with gangsters.”

“I see,” the Chiss mused. There was still something unsettling about him, but I was likely just operating on biases.

We approached the dock Maya sent us to, just around the corner. I sensed two lifeforms: Gamorreans, likely armed and definitely stupid. “Everyone, wait. He’s got bodyguards outside the hangar. Gamorreans,” I whispered.

“I sense them, too,” Lyrilis confirmed.

“So?” Fry said back, continuing towards the dock.

“So we need to discuss this, droid,” I snipped.

“Let’s split up. If we need to negotiate anything, he’ll be more receptive to a small group than a large one,” Hubri said.

“You think so?” Gordon asked. “If that’s the case, I’ll go.”

“I would like to join whoever meet with Switch,” Lyrilis spoke up. “Having someone capable of using the Force may prove useful in negotiating.”

“You and your Miraluka friend aren’t the only Force sensitives here,” Hubri replied, pointing a finger at me, “and the Jedi weren’t the only Force tradition in the galaxy.” She stared down at Lyrilis. Against Lyrilis’s short stature, Hubri towered.

“I assume you’re a part of one?” Lyrilis inquired, slipping back into a demure persona.

“I was,” Hubri replied. “Those clones didn’t just kill your people, Jedi. Either way, I have connections to the Underworld this Switch guy might be open to. I’ll go talk to him.”

“So it’ll be Lyrilis and Hubri?” Gordon asked. “You guys don’t want muscle?”

“Muscle might make Switch less keen towards us,” I said. Gordon frowned, almost as if he was pouting on purpose. “Maybe next time, alright?” I sighed.

“If you hear blaster fire, don’t hesitate to come in after us,” Lyrilis instructed us. With that, she and Hubri disappeared around the corner, tightly clutching the pike slung over her shoulder. The sound of the hangar door opening and then closing signaled their success with the guards. I still sensed the guards’ presence--they had stayed outside the hangar.

A few minutes passed before Fry spoke up, “I’ll go in to make sure they’re alright.” He began moving towards the corner and I reached out to grab him, gripping his metal arm.

“Don’t you dare,” I warned. “I’m sure they can handle this--”

I heard the door to the hangar open. Lyrilis and Hubri came around the corner, and following behind them was a silver protocol droid, holding a blaster in one hand. “Come in, everyone! Your friends let slip that they rudely left you all outside,” the droid chidded, motioning us to follow him in. I exchanged a look with Lyrilis and Hubri. Lyrilis gave a small nod which I took as encouragement to follow his instruction. I let go of Fry’s arm and began walking around the corner, the others following after me. The droid stopped in place and I watched as he aimed his blaster at one of the Gamorrean guards, shooting him. The other squealed but the droid had shot him as quickly as he had the other. “I prefer to do business alone,” the droid said to us, in a chipper tone of voice that startled me more than the murder.

I tried to hide my shock as we walked past the bodies into the hangar, larger than any other room I had seen on the space station. The only ship in the hangar, however, was a small shuttle. The only other objects in the hangar were large crates scattered about the floor and a desk. Several men roamed around the expansive room, performing various chores and errands. All of them were armed. The droid hobbled over to the desk and checked a datapad.

“I will introduce myself again for my new friends. I am Switch,” the droid spoke. I shouldn’t have been surprised by this admission; I had just witnessed the very same droid murder two of his own guards. Despite this, I still was taken aback by the idea of a protocol droid being a powerful gangster. “Maya, unfortunately, couldn’t complete our deal, so you are to finish it for her, yes?”

“Yes, that is the arrangement,” Hubri agreed.

“Excellent, I have your information right here,” Switch said, holding up the datapad he had been reading. “It will cost you two thousand credits.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Lyrilis exclaimed. “That is not what we were told!”

“It’s two thousand credits. No less.”

“I don’t know what you’re pulling, partner,” Fry said.

I thought for a moment. I had a fair amount of money on me. Additionally, I knew this Bail Organa would likely compensate us the credits. Maya said he was a big deal. Big deals tend to have credits to go around.

“It’s two thousand credits, unless,” Switch started, “some of you would be willing to cut a deal with me. I will lower the cost by five hundred credits for each of you that agrees to work for me in the future.”

“Explain what you mean by ‘work for you’,” Salak asked. He had been silent during our exchange up until now.

“I will call on you to do a job for me at some point in the future. Even I do not know what I may ask your assistance with. My line of work is very unpredictable!” He explained.

I did not like the idea of owing someone such a vague debt. That droid was hiding too much behind his expressionless face. I had no trust in him. I had already resigned to parting with more than a few credits for the time being when Fry spoke up, “I’ll take your offer, Switch.”

“Excellent! Anyone else?”

We were quiet for another moment before Hubri spoke up. “I owe enough people enough things. What’s one more?” she said. “I accept your deal, droid.”

“Smart one, you are,” Switch replied. “Any last takers?” The rest of us remained silent. “Well, a thousand credits it’ll be then.”

I couldn’t help but wonder why Hubri had accepted the droid’s offer. Fry I understood. He had already proven himself quite… dimwitted. Hubri, however, I had thought of as smarter than making vague deals with mysterious gangsters. She mentioned having underground connections. Maybe she knew more than I did.

We were starting to pull out our credits to pay up when a Chevin with a characteristic long snout and beady eyes came barging into the hanger behind us, with several men brandishing heavy blasters behind him. “You’ve spited me for the last time, Switch!” the Chevin exclaimed.

“Ah, Ganga’Lor! I did nothing of the sort, friend!” Switch replied. I became aware of half a dozen or so gunmen approaching from further in the hangar.

“Attack him! Attack him!” Ganga’Lor yelled, producing his own blaster.

I didn’t plan on ending up in a gang shootout with a homicidal droid, a Chevin, and a former Jedi when I woke up that morning, but I suppose I was craving some unpredictability in my life.

I dove behind the desk, taking cover as best I could. I aimed for some of the Chevin’s grunts. There were about five or six of them, but Switch had more men, from what I could sense behind me. I shot at a few of the men and admired my exceptionally poor marksmanship. I carried a blaster with me at all times, but I tried to make a habit of rarely using it.

Beside me, Switch got hit by a cold bolt to his metal head. His lights flickered out and he fell to the ground with a loud _clang_. It was almost as sickening to watch as the Gamorreans, even though he wasn’t organic. I aimed for the gunman that had taken out Switch and fired a bolt into his thigh. I braced myself for his yelp of pain. I hated injuring people.

A bolt flew past me. I watched as Fry wielded his ancient slugthrower with deadly accuracy, taking out the lackey that fired at me with ease. His novelty weapon actually worked. I was impressed.

I focused my mind on the Chevin and aimed my blaster. I inhaled sharply through my nose before pulling the trigger. I watched the bolt sail directly into his snout. He fell to the ground and I sensed the Force leave his body. The two remaining grunts looked at each other, as if unsure if they should press on without their leader. Gordon answered their question for them, punching both unconscious.

I let out a nervous laugh as I took in the carnage in the hangar. My mind jumped to Switch lying next to me. I had half a mind to take the datapad and leave him like that. I considered it for a moment, staring at the datapad on the desk in front of me. I decided against it and knelt down next to the droid. Maya seemed to trust him, and, tentatively, I trusted Maya. He was at least a source of information, I thought. I got to work on him, reattaching wires and checking his circuitry. I hoped the few times I fixed droids and stuck ship controls on the docks of Nar Shaddaa would come through for me.

I attached a wire with a small spark and his eyes flickered back on. “Ah! Ah! What happened?” he asked, his voice chip still stuck on ‘psychotically happy’.

“Calm down, you’re fine,” I muttered, attaching the final wires. I patched the small blaster hole in his chrome head. “There. All fixed.”

I got up, but left Switch lying prone on the ground for a while longer, knowing his joints wouldn’t allow him to get up just yet. My new companions were looking around the room, checking bodies for IDs and credits. I walked up to the body of Ganga’Lor and searched his pockets. I found a small datapad on him. It was protected with an encryption, but it was weak. I easily cracked it and scrolled through its contents: three coordinates on the station. Two featured no marker giving away what may lay there, but the final one was marked with a credit symbol.

Sudden anxiety flashed through my body, my stomach dropping as I remembered I needed to fly back to Nar Shaddaa or risk missing my timetable. I approached Lyrilis, who was helping Switch off the ground. “Hey, take this,” I said, slipping her the datapad I found and my share of the credits I owed Switch.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“I found it on the Chevin. Look, I have to return my ship to my boss or I’ll be more trouble than I’m worth. I’ll fly back after and meet up with you guys,” I said.

She frowned a little at my news. “You’ll be back?”

“Yeah, I’ll keep in touch with Maya and you on where to meet you all. I promise,” I smiled at her.

“Alright, be safe,” she said, and stuck her hand out in front of her.

“You, too,” I took her hand and shook it.

I hurried out of Switch’s hangar and up to the dock my ship was in. I boarded the ship and took my seat in the cramped cockpit. I felt weird as I started up the ship, like I was leaving something behind. I had a feeling like I might’ve been starting up that ship for the last time. I felt like I was losing something, but it didn’t really feel bad.


	5. New Job

The jump to Nar Shaddaa was routine and uneventful. I paced around the ship, anxious about what I had to do once I was planetside. My mind was filled with thoughts about my new allies and of the real potential for a rebellion. The more I considered it, the more excited I felt and the more scared I became. I knew rebellion wouldn’t come without casualties. I knew I could be one of them. My mind drifted to my parents. They didn’t have a chance to fight, I thought. I had one. I had to take it.

I pulled out of hyperspace to see the familiar lit-up lines and rings of activity that speckled the surface of Nar Shaddaa. From space, I could look at it and pretend it was Coruscant. I could pretend I was flying home. As I approached the moon, however, glaring differences would cloud my fantasy. The buildings were shorter and the haze was worse. Neon covered every inch of the buildings that rose into the orange sky. Everywhere you went, you would end up owing some Hutt money for something. Every district was a red-light district.

I followed the familiar traffic to the DeNav Corporation complex. I approached the hangar and landed the ship, powering it down. I took a breath as I looked over the controls one last time before leaving the ship. I walked down the ramp and into the hangar. I walked past the commotion of people loading cargo and pilots chatting in circles. I approached the check-in counter for my dock and spoke to the clerk typing into a console, a Cathar woman with reddish fur and green eyes. I recognized her. “Hey Aya, back from Sel Zonn,” I said, in a friendly tone.

“You’re five minutes late, Aryss,” she hissed. “You know the bosses don’t like late.”

“It’s five minutes. They can handle it.”

She typed something into the computer terminal. “Do you have the credits? I believe you should’ve received physical creds.”

I pulled the stack of credits from the pouch on my belt. “Right here.” I placed the credit chips on the counter in front of me.

Aya took the stack and counted them. Finally, she looked back to me, “You’re ten short.”

“Seriously?” I put on my best act. “The guy must’ve ripped me off.”

“You’re late and you don’t have the full amount. You’re in for hell later.”

I repressed a smirk. I was going to be off the planet by the time my boss would find out about either. “I’ve messed up worse,” I shrugged.

Aya gave me a sigh, “Alright, you’re checked in, Aryss.”

I walked towards the dormitory to retrieve what few belongings I had. The dormitory was a shabby installation in the complex, constructed as a countermeasure against pilots quitting in favor of joining the Imperial Navy. In the Navy, pilots would have better training, better living, and better chances at glory and the only cost was being stripped of an identity and freedom, not to mention how dangerous I'd heard those new TIE starfighters were to fly. The Navy was the reason every pilot stupid enough to work for DeNav was imprisoned by long contracts and strict regulations. Somehow, the rundown dorms were supposed to be an inviting enough reason to convince pilots to stay with the company. I didn’t complain about it, however. It was nice to have a place I could guarantee I could rest at the end of the day, compared to my first year and a half on the planet, drifting from abandoned apartments to coworkers’ couches and anywhere else I could find to sleep.

I made it to my dorm--a room that was barely bigger than a closet. It had just enough room to fit a bed, a desk, and a chair. Adding a person pushed the limits of its capacity. I opened the drawer to the desk and gathered my few belongings, mostly grooming items and small keepsakes.

I paused as I grabbed the photo on the bottom of the drawer. It was physical, something of a rarity in that sense. I looked over the image of my mother and father, younger than they were in my memories, smiling at each other. It was a picture from before they had married, but it was the only one I had. My mother’s brown hair shone with the same reddish hues as mine, and my father’s jaw rounded the same sharp angles as my own. They stood in front of the Temple, in the familiar uniforms that I could still remember the smell of. I preferred to remember them like this. I carefully folded the picture and placed in my pocket.

I sorted through the rest, deciding what I would keep and what I would leave. I left most of it since it was a lot of dead weight. I pocketed the spare energy packs and my grooming kit. I also kept a small kit of tools to bypass doors and security. It was illegal for me to own without a permit, but it was useful enough for me to take the chance. Besides, law enforcement on the Smuggler’s Moon was a punchline, or at least it was. More and more stormtroopers began taking up posts in popular areas. Some Hutts made deals with the Empire. Nowhere would be sovereign from their watch soon. It made me nervous.

I looked around my cramped room one last time before leaving. I never thought to look back.

I walked at a hurried pace, paying close attention to my surroundings. I just had to look like I was heading out for some time off on the planet. I already knew I would catch a speeder to a local hub first, before the spaceport. Once I was at the spaceport, I would check in with the others. I would need a fake name to purchase my passage of the planet... I retreated further into my mind as I planned my escape, my focus on my surroundings dwindling.

“Where are you headed, Aryss?” I heard a voice call out. I hadn't sensed him approach.

I turned around to see my supervisor, walking towards me, his burly figure taking up much of my vision. He was a human with hair as white as his skin and small, beady dark eyes. “Oh, Yorvan, I was just heading out on some errands,” I explained. I could feel my heart beating out of my chest as I tried to maintain my cool. I knew he was probably after the credits, but my guilty mind couldn’t calm itself.

He crossed his meaty arms. “It’s _Foreman_ Yorvan,” he started, “and you won’t be heading anywhere until you fork over the missing credits.”

I breathed a little relief that this was only over the credits. “Why would I do that? It’s not my fault we work with criminals that rip us off.” My hands grew sweaty as I spoke.

“You know you need to count every time we work physical. You’re too smart to forget that, blind girl,” he said, pointing a finger at my chest.

“Fine, you want credits?” I said, pulling a stack from my pocket. I counted out ten credits and held them out to him. “Take them.”

“It’ll be twenty, since they’re gonna dock my pay for your mistake.”

I sighed and produced ten more. He took the credits from me and slipped them into his pocket. “Is that all?” I asked, acting impatient. I wanted nothing more than for him to leave me alone.

“If you pull that one more time, I’ll find the run with most Imperial checkpoints and you just might find some illegal weapons stashed in your cargo, Aryss,” he warned, jamming his finger into my chest one last time before walking off. I felt the tension melt off my shoulders. I walked as fast as I could to the speeder station.

* * *

 

By the time I reached the spaceport on Nar Shaddaa, I received a message from Maya. _Meet your new friends where my boss works_ , the message read.

I boarded a shuttle to Alderaan, using a fake name for the ticket and the last of the physical credits I had. I didn’t want anything traced. I was far too paranoid for this kind of conspiracy.

I felt out of place on the shuttle. It had been a couple of years since I had flown without being the pilot. I wanted to wrangle the controls from the pilot so I could have something to do.

When the shuttle pulled out of hyperspace over Alderaan, my mind was glued to the planet. I had always heard about its beauty, and I wanted to see it for myself. The shuttle descended on the planet and I was taken aback by the startling amount of nature. I had lived on city-planets my whole life. Nature wasn’t something I was accustomed to in such abundance. I wondered if those used to this amount of plants and green felt stifled on planets like Coruscant, where you only found those kinds of things in parks and gardens.

The planet was speckled purple with tall mountains, and the mountains themselves were topped with pure white snow. Large bodies of water swathed the surface as if they were placed there by some critical aesthetic eye. Trees and grass moved with a gentle wind and I could see small pink and blue flowers dotting the grass. Even the sprawling capital city of Aldera seemed to blend into the natural beauty of the planet as we approached it. I thought about how nice a vacation on a planet like this would be.

Too bad I wasn’t on vacation.

The shuttle landed in the main spaceport of the capital. I received a message from Lyrilis, instructing me to make my way to the palace. I felt embarrassingly excited about the idea of going to a palace. I knew this Organa was important, but I didn’t think I’d be invited to a _palace_.

I navigated the streets to the palace, a massive building that would’ve been hard to miss even if I were on the other side of the city. The palace itself seemed to be carved of a single piece of marble, rich and beautiful. Alderaan was known for its opulent beauty, but I imagined it would have suffered somehow under the Empire. I smiled thinking that even the oppressive might of the Empire couldn’t spoil a place like this. I hurried, having no idea how long they had been waiting for me. I entered the palace through a massive archway and spotted my companions rather quickly. Lyrilis’s purple hair and Gordon’s massive frame made them stick out a bit from the other patrons in the public gathering area, mostly tourists.

“Ah, our other Miraluka friend,” Gordon said.

“Sorry for leaving you all, didn’t want to be trouble,” I said.

Fry held out a can to me. “Want a drink?” he asked.

Lyrilis shook her head at me. “Don’t.”

I examined the contents of the can. It was some kind of unidentifiable blue goop. “I… I think I’ll pass, Fry.”

He shrugged. “More for me.”

I gave a nervous chuckle as I watched him raise the can to his face, where a mouth would've been. A little bit spilled out onto him. “So what did I miss?”

“A lot of dead stormtroopers and-” Gordon started.

Lyrilis cut him off, “An explosion!” Her voice had more emotion than I had heard from her prior.

“The coordinates on that datapad led to a lot of good supplies and valuable treasures,” Salak explained. “Too bad most of it was caught in the, _ahem_ , explosion.”

Fry lifted his can of goo, “Managed to save this, though.”

I noticed Lyrilis’s hand fidgeting in her pocket, as if she were playing with something in it, turning it over in her fingers. I thought briefly to ask, but as I started, a man, dressed like a servant or homekeeper, approached us from a large archway. “Are you all acquainted with Maya?” he asked.

“Yes, we are,” Lyrilis answered.

“Follow me,” he directed.

We did as he asked, walking through the archway and into a wide, spacious room. The ceiling soared above our heads. Everything was the same pristine white marbled color, with adornments of blue, gold, and light purples. Ornate overhead lights lit the room just enough to prevent strain from the brightness of the white.

The man led us into a small office off from the main hall. It was much homier, carpets and wooden furniture lending it an antique feel. “Please wait here for Senator Organa,” the man instructed before disappearing behind the door.

We waited only a few minutes--just long for the silence to begin to become awkward--before the Senator opened the door. He looked nothing like I imagined on the flight over. He was tall, with tanned skin and black hair, and a goatee surrounding his thin lips to match. His eyes were the kind to shapeshift, one property of ocular species that could make me uncomfortable. His eyes could look kind when he wanted to be friendly and stern when he wanted to send a message. He was dressed in the luxurious robes of a politician. I expected that much.

“Good morning, friends,” he began, his words clear. “I expect you all found your way here alright?”

We let out a few mumbles of agreement.

“I’m glad. Now, I understand that you all finished Maya’s work for her and secured a deal with the gangster Switch?” More agreement. “Excellent, this information will be invaluable to this rebellion. Did it cost you anything? I know gangsters always have a price.”

“A thousand credits,” I said, “split between us.”

He nodded, “I will make sure you all are all properly compensated, as well as paid for your work.” He was quiet for a moment before speaking again. “I hope you all understand that you are in danger from the Empire now.”

Lyrilis gave a short, almost sarcastic laugh, “I’ve always been in danger from them, Senator.”

“A Jedi?” he asked, surprised.

“Formerly, yes,” she nodded.

Organa’s eyes shifted to saddened sympathy, “I am glad you were able to make it out alive. I… I know it was hard. I saw the carnage for myself.” I looked down at my feet. I didn’t want to say anything about myself, not yet at least. The fewer people that knew, the better. I admired Lyrilis’s openness. I wished that I had her courage.

Lyrilis didn’t respond. She just pulled her lips into a tight, sad smile.

“Now,” Organa’s eyes changed again, back into business mode, “you’ve made the choice to help us. You’re in this life now and we can protect you, but we will expect your help. We do not yet have the resources to shelter refugees and fugitives.”

“What kind of help?” Hubri asked.

“Working for the Rebellion. You will be among other revolutionaries aiming to restore the galaxy to the Republic,” Organa explained. “I have plenty of jobs that need to get done, but no one free to do them.”

“And what if we refuse?” Hubri continued.

Organa thought for a moment. “Then you refuse. You leave here and speak nothing of what you’ve seen. You get no protection from us and have to try to live your life normally again, despite your now no-doubt terrorist status. If you do speak, then you crush what we’ve worked to build. I will likely be jailed, if not executed, as will everyone else working on this. It’s as simple as that. So what will it be?”

Hubri smirked, “You don’t mince words.”

“I like to think I’m not like other politicians, though I know it to not be true,” Organa smiled. “So is everyone in?”

We all agreed.

“Great. You all seem like you will be good help. Now,” Organa shuffled some papers on the desk next to him, “for your next jobs for our rebellion. I already mentioned I have a couple I need done. I will give you all a choice between the most urgent two, in no particular order.

“First is on the abandoned Sith home planet of Korriban.” The word ‘Sith’ sent a shiver down my spine. My parents had told me stories of their evil like it was a fantasy story. They told me Sith didn’t exist anymore, but that we should all still be cautious of the Dark Side. “We believe the Empire is looking for an ancient Sith relic there. Anything related to the Sith that the Empire has plans for is something we must stop. We don’t know much else.

“Your other option involves an Imperial defector on the planet Felucia. We don’t know much more other than that he has information the Rebellion could use in our resistance against the Empire. We do not know the defector’s name, and it could very well be a trap, but the potential for good outweighs the risks. There is also the concern that the Empire may execute him before we can rescue him. If this happens, our chance at gaining this information is gone.” The senator took a breath while we processed what he had told us. “So, which would you like to take on first?”

Salak quickly spoke up, “I think we should rescue this defector immediately. He is in danger and offers a chance at intel your rebellion may have a hard time coming by through other means.”

Lyrilis shook her head, “We must eliminate whatever it is the Empire is looking for on Korriban. A Sith artifact falling into the hands of the Emperor…” her voice trailed off, “I will not let that happen if I can help it.”

I nodded my head in agreement, “I’m with Lyrilis. Anything the Empire wants with a Sith relic can’t be good.”

“I agree,” Hubri said.

Salak turned to Gordon, “Any opinions?”

Gordon shook his head, “I’m okay with either job as long as I get to swing my axe.”

“So Korriban?” Organa asked.

Salak shrugged, “Majority rules.”

“What about my opinion?” Fry asked.

“Well, what’s your opinion, FR-9?” Organa invited.

“Please, it’s Fry,” Fry corrected the senator. “I think Korriban is fine.”

Organa stood for a moment, a confused look in his eyes. “Okay, uh. Korriban, then.” He shook his head, bewildered by Fry, as I’m sure we all were. “Anyways, your contact on Korriban will be your new friend, Maya. She was working on this investigation while she worked on Sel Zonn, so she’s well informed and will be able to help you.”

“Maya is fit to be on the field already?” Lyrilis asked.

Organa gave away a small smile, “She’s a resilient one. I couldn’t keep an assignment away from her if I tried.” She must be a busybody, like me, I thought, though my busy habits were more from need of distraction than plain desire for activity. Maybe she was the same, trying to avoid dwelling too long, or maybe she was just driven. “You all will need commlinks,” he declared, reaching into a drawer of the desk he was leaning on. He pulled out a tray of comms, small and easily concealable. “They operate on a private channel, and encrypted, but the Empire has plenty ability to crack encryptions. They could easily listen in with enough effort, so be mindful.”

We all took a commlink, thanking the senator.

“You will be transported to the planet by one of my old friends,” Organa continued. “Don’t ask him too many questions and you’ll get along well enough with him.” I didn’t know how I felt about friends of Imperial senators, but Organa seemed genuine enough. He was trustworthy, I decided.

“Will he be helping us on this mission?” Salak asked.

Organa shook his head, “He will stay with the ship in case you need a quick retreat. Now, I will get someone to escort you to the dock he’s waiting at.”

 

We were escorted to the dock by another attendant. She walked fast, not like she was in a hurry, but rather that was just her natural pace. We made it to the dock, which had a passcode at least 20 digits long, masterfully inputted by our fast-paced escort. The door to the dock slid open, revealing behind it a beautiful light freighter. I couldn’t help but get giddy looking at a ship that looked as well-kept as this one. It was the kind of ship I could only dream of piloting one day, when I had the money for my own, and I left DeNav.

It dawned on me as the thought crossed my mind: I already left DeNav. I was free to go where I wanted, do what I wanted, with no timetable nagging in the back of my mind or flashing on a console. Too bad I didn’t have a ship like I wanted.

A man approached us as we entered the dock, dressed in a leather duster and tank top that covered his muscular body. His face was square, covered in a swathe of stubble that matched his short chopped, light brown hair. His skin was lightly tanned under his white tank top, but still lighter than his hair. His expression was cold. “You all Organa’s new crew?” he asked, his voice gruff.

“Yes, we are. My name is Lyrilis Vann,” Lyrilis said, stepping forward.

“My name is Chak’ard Zensos,” he started, “but call me Chak. We can do the rest of the introductions on the _Stalwart_ ,” the man replied, gesturing to the freighter. He disappeared up the ramp to the ship, his coat billowing out behind him as he walked. We followed him up into the ship. It was just as impressive on the inside, clean and sleek unlike the rundown freighter I flew for DeNav. I was excited to see how the _Stalwart_ flew.

Chak disappeared into the cockpit, Fry following behind him. I didn’t have the guts to follow him, as much as I would’ve loved to see the controls. The rest of us gathered just outside of the cockpit, seated on the lounge seats in what seemed to be a common area.

The ship floated upwards gently, and soon we were out of Alderaan’s atmosphere. “Korriban’s a long jump,” Chak’s voice came over the ship’s PA, “so settle in.” The ship lurched backward slightly before moving forward into the familiar feeling of hyperspace.

Lyrilis slid off of the lounge seat and onto the floor, in a meditating position. I watched her, curiously. I never mastered meditating, despite my mother trying to teach me. _Always too many thoughts in your head_ , my mother would say, not quite scolding.

Force-sensitives hadn’t exactly been jumping over themselves to openly use the Force since the Jedi Purge, so it was odd, but somehow comforting, to see someone meditating on the Force. As she meditated, a faint glow came from her jacket pocket. I tried reaching out to the source of the glow with the Force, and found, of all things, a rock. It didn’t seem like a lightsaber or focusing crystal, but I couldn’t think of any other rocks that would glow in response to its owner meditating. Lyrilis snapped out of her meditation as she realized the rock in her pocket putting off light, as if she was surprised by its luminance. It dimmed as soon as her concentration broke. She took it out of her pocket and examined it in her hand. It was plain white, translucent, and no bigger than Lyrilis’s palm. It seemed perfectly normal, ignoring its apparent habit of glowing.

I didn’t ask about the rock. I still felt peculiarly shy regarding her.

I looked around the ship, my mind settling on Hubri, standing across the room and leaning against a wall. I couldn’t make out the nature of her Force sensitivity. It bothered me. She wasn’t Jedi, she said as much herself, but the Force around her didn’t seem sinister. She shifted against the wall, turning onto her shoulder and glaring in my direction. She must’ve sensed me poking around her.

The rest of the jump was quiet. Salak and Gordon rested. Fry had been kicked out of the cockpit, Chak yelling at him to keep his metal hands off things. There was a feeling of tension in the air, or maybe it was just in my head. Korriban was a place I had never imagined myself going, for any reason. I had heard about it in the story I was told about the Sith. It was their homeworld, a place made of malice and hatred. I didn’t know much else, but what I did know was enough to make me fearful.

The ship jerked as we left hyperspace. Chak emerged from the cockpit. “Get out,” he barked.

“Aren’t you going to _land_ first?” Hubri protested.

Chak crossed his arms. “No. Use the escape pod,” he said, pointing in the direction of the pods.

Fry bounded towards a pod, entering it with perhaps too much enthusiasm. We followed, starting to pile in. It was a tight fit already, but we were still missing one member of our group.

Gordon peered inside the pod and turned to Chak, “These pods are normally made for four human-sized creatures and I’m afraid that I will be too big with this number of people already inside.”

“Can’t risk you landing without your buddies and I don’t want to lose two pods to this hellish planet,” Chak explained. “Squeeze in, big guy,” he clapped a hand onto Gordon’s blubbery back.

And so we sailed into the atmosphere of the Sith homeworld, crushed by a Herglic in an over-capacity escape pod, on a mission from an Imperial Senator calling himself a rebel.


	6. An Ancient Place

The pod hit the ground hard, bouncing slightly before landing finally on its side. Luckily for all of us, it was Gordon’s side, or I fear we would’ve been crushed to death by our massive bipedal whale friend.

We climbed out of the pod and the dryness of the desert punched me in the lungs, like all the moisture in my body had been sapped from me. The planet’s sun scorched the surface, reflecting back and making everything far too bright for my mind to process. I adjusted my Force sight so I could bear the brightness.

“Aren’t we supposed to meet up with Maya?” Gordon asked.

Hubri crossed her arms. “How the hell are we supposed to find one person in a desert? That pilot just dumped us here to kill us off.”

Lyrilis lowered her head, like she was reaching out into the Force. I followed her lead, searching for Maya, or any life I could find. Instead, I felt dread. Not overwhelming, just a whisper, a hum in the background of my mind. Once I had invited it in, it lingered. I tried to hush it, banish it to one corner of my thoughts, but I could only dim it slightly from my consciousness. “Do you sense that?” Lyrilis whispered. I nodded and Hubri did, too. “It’s annoying,” she complained.

“Do you sense Maya, Jedi?” Salak asked.

“My name,” Lyrilis began, her mouth’s corners pulled tightly into a frown, “for the last time, is Lyrilis. And yes, I sense a lifeform. It’s too distant to determine if it’s Maya, however.”

“Should we really follow Force trails into an ancient Sith desert?” Hubri asked.

“It’s our only lead,” I shrugged.

Salak nodded, “I want to inspect the area for native life first.”

“Inspect away,” Hubri sighed.

Salak flipped over a few rocks nearby, finding under one a centipede, bright orange and black and completely normal. I was somewhat disappointed. I was hoping for something at least a little more evil-looking. Salak scooped the creature into a test tube and corked it, returning the tube to the pouch on his belt. I realized how little I knew about my new companions as I questioned what kind of profession required test tubes and provided enough reason to rebel against the Empire.

We set off into the desert, following Lyrilis’s senses. The walk through the sand was tedious, forcing me to use muscles in my legs I hadn't been aware of until they started to ache with overuse. Each step kicked up grains of sand, a few of them managing down my boots and causing irritation. The heat was another source of anguish in the hell the planet made itself to be. I shrugged off my leather jacket and tied it around my waist, my arms joyfully free from the heavy material.

After about thirty minutes of walking, we came across a crumbling structure made of sandstone. It felt desolate and the hum in my mind grew louder as we approached. I doubted that it was the sole source. It was likely one of many voices clouding my mind. Despite the despondent and lonely feel to the structure, there was a draw to it that was almost too strong to bear. My mind felt myself walking towards it, though I was aware that my feet were not moving at all.

From the entrance of the dilapidated structure, I heard a child crying. I focused on it and found the source of the crying. He was human and dressed in rags. His skin was darkly tanned and his hair was a deep black. His face was smudged with soot and the scrapes up his arms and

We walked for only thirty minutes or so over the hot and treacherous sand before we legs were covered in dried blood. He was wailing and scared. I reached out to sense if the child was real or just an apparition. To my startling surprise, he felt as real as the people around me. The dark side was so strong around the structure that I had to doubt my senses. I looked again at the child, but I didn’t recognize him. The dark side was likely trying to trick me into saving the thing out of some past trauma or guilt. I might not have even been the target of the cheap trick.

That’s what my mother told me the dark side was whenever I would get too curious and ask the wrong questions. _It’s nothing but cheap tricks that put you in danger_ , she would say.

“I’m going to check that out,” Salak announced.

Lyrilis put her pike out in front of Salak as he stepped forward, “Don’t. The dark side is strong there. The child is likely a trap.”

Salak looked to Lyrilis, his eyes confused. “Child?”

Hubri’s eyebrows furrowed, “You don’t see or hear the child down there? It’s screaming its head off.”

Salak shook his head. “There’s no child.”

“It _is_ a Force trick,” I said, though mostly to myself.

Salak moved Lyrilis’s pike out of his way and continued down to the structure. “Well, now I have to investigate. Follow me if you like.”

Salak moved passed the child, giving no indication that it was visible to him. He disappeared inside the structure for only a few minutes, but under the oppressive sun and surrounded by the chaotic hum of the dark side, I would have preferred to be moving towards our goal. He reemerged and came back to us. “There are some skeletons in there. They had light swords on them, like yours,” he pointed to Lyrilis.

“Light swords, hmm?” Gordon asked, putting his hand on his chin. “I want one,” he announced and began walking towards the ruins.

Lyrilis opened her mouth as if to say something, but stopped as we felt the ground rumbling underneath us. The structure began sinking into the sand, being quickly swallowed by the ground. After the tops of the dilapidated structure disappeared, the sand on top quieted as if it’d never been disturbed. The child stopped crying, and the lightsabers were gone.

“Well,” Gordon began, “guess I’m not getting one.”

Salak put a hand on Gordon’s blubbery back, “It’s okay, buddy. We’ll find you a different one.”

We decided to press on, the sun still high in the sky and not offering any relief. I could feel my already-freckled shoulders starting to sustain damage from the bright light. After what must’ve been over a couple of kilometers, we could see a cliff face in the distance.

I took a drink from my waterskin as we walked and a withered old man, dressed in coarse cloth rags and with barely a hair on his head, approached us, almost as if he appeared from nothing. “Water,” he croaked, pointing to the waterskin in my hand.

“Water?” I asked.

He nodded, expectantly.

Salak spoke up, “Here, have some of mine.” He held out his waterskin to the man.

The man took the waterskin from Salak’s hands greedily and put his mouth to the spout. He tipped it upwards and the water passed through him, his form shimmering as the water moved. Underneath him, as the water fell, a patch of wet sand formed.

I reached out with the Force and the solid form of something living surrounded him, much like the child. I looked at the man with alarm. He was as real and living as my companions beside me, but something about him wasn’t right.

He finished pouring out Salak’s waterskin onto the ground. “More water,” he begged, reaching for my waterskin.

“Uhh, no, I think you’ve had… enough,” I replied. I was alarmed.

“Let’s just keep going,” Hubri whispered. I couldn’t agree more.

We walked off, leaving the old man behind. He was significantly slower than us, barely waddling through the sand. We managed to make a comfortable distance between him as we reached the cliff face stretching above us for several meters, at least five times my height. “Do we go around?” Salak asked as a head peeked over the side of the cliff.

Bouncy, brown hair hung over the cliff. “Hey! Sel Zonn crew!” she yelled down at us, waving.

“How’re we supposed to get up?” Hubri yelled back.

“Well, you see…” Maya began, “Chak was supposed to land the ship up here. Dunno what you all are doing down there!”

“That horrible pilot sent us planetside in an escape pod!” Hubri complained.

Maya’s face scrunched up as she let out a laugh, “Sorry, sorry! I don’t mean to laugh. I’ll send down some rope to help you all up!”

Maya let down a rope and one by one, we scaled the cliff face, some of us with relative ease, but others… With less ease, and unfortunately for my ego, I fell into this latter category. I made it up, no less, and that’s all that counted.

Maya wore her hair in a big ponytail, and she was dressed in an earthy green tank top that complimented her warm complexion. A large rifle, almost as long as she was tall, was slung over her shoulder. She looked pretty nice and significantly healthier than she had when we had left her on Sel Zonn.

"You look better than last time we saw you," Lyrilis commented.

Maya nodded. "Bacta's strong stuff. I still smell it stuck in my nose, but I'm healthy!" There was an optimism about her that I could've probably learned from.

When we had all made it to the top of the cliff, Maya led us a little further across the sand before a large edifice came over the horizon, casting a shadow on the sand directly in front of it. It was an impressive building, made of a huge slab of sandstone. Large statues flanked a small entrance. The statues depicted what must’ve been ancient Sith lords, their faces blank and their heads covered by hoods. Imposing obelisks lined the approached. Carvings on the temple showed what I could only guess as moments in Sith history. They depicted horrible ceremonies, grotesque Force rituals, and general suffering. Around the temple, groups of white-clad stormtroopers and other various groups in Imperial uniforms milled around what appeared to be a full-scale excavation operation.

“That’s the temple the artifact should be in,” Maya pointed.

“It’s completely surrounded by Imperials,” Hubri said.

“I’ve been watching this place for a few days. Never seen anything taken off planet, the shuttles only bring people down. I’ve only ever seen things go in the temple, too. Nothing comes out,” Maya explained. Her statement didn’t exactly inspire confidence, as we were likely going to have to go in. She handed a pair of binoculars to Salak. “Care for a closer look?”

Salak took the binoculars and looked at the temple. “Impressive operation they have going on down there,” he remarked. “You girls care to look?” he asked, offering the binoculars to Lyrilis.

“Miralukan Force sight doesn’t work with lens-based magnification devices,” she explained flatly. She handed the binoculars over to Hubri. “If anything, our Force sight is better than any machine.”

Salak gave a small chuckle, “Oh, I know, I just thought it would be funny if you had tried.”

Lyrilis sighed and I shook my head in annoyance. “I’m not stupid,” Lyrilis grumbled.

“Well,” Maya declared, “good luck! I’m hoping Chak will actually land sometime soon so we can get off once the job is done.”

“I hope so, too,” Hubri jeered.

After a few deep breaths, we all headed down towards the temple, quietly discussing a plan for getting through the Imperial excavation team. We reached as far as we dared to go without a solid plan. We crouched behind a large rock, out of view of the stormtroopers.

“So I have a plan,” Fry announced.

Hubri eyed him with suspicion. “What is it?”

“Watch this.” Fry bounded up from his spot behind the rock and walked towards the boundary of the Imperial excavation site.

“Fry!” I hissed, trying to keep my voice down. The dunce of a droid walked up to a stormtrooper guarding the site and began talking, but unfortunately, we were too far out of earshot to hear any of what was going on. I watched as the stormtrooper began leading Fry into the temple. Whatever he said, it worked. I quickly remembered the comlinks Senator Organa had given us. I fished mine from my pocket and flicked it on. “Fry, tell me you have your comm on at least,” I begged into the receiver.

Hubri plucked the device from my hand, “Fry, you piece of s-!”

Lyrilis took the comm from her. “If you have your comm on, tell us what you see.”

We waited for a few moments, each one filled with my anxiety than the last as my mind tried to formulate some kind of rescue for him. My heart was dropping with fears that he didn’t have his comm turned on and then, “Roger.”

We all sighed the release of our tension. The droid was smarter than he lead on, maybe.

We listened through the static of the comlink as a stormtrooper directed Fry along with whatever the trooper thought Fry was supposed to be doing. “Take this set of tools to block C7, got it droid?” the stormtrooper barked.

“Yes sir,” Fry replied. There was a clanking sound of what could’ve been a door closing.

“What do you see?” I asked, hoping the Imperials couldn’t hear his comm.

Silence.

“A statue.”

Salak shook his head. “Probably not the artifact,” he whispered.

Hubri pursed her lips. “Do you all feel that?”

I knew what she was referring to. There was something… _powerful_ drawing my mind into the temple, daring me to delve into it. An irresistible draw I had to shake from my mind so I could focus but it _whispered_. Louder than a whisper, it demanded my attention, like the general chaos of the Force on the rest of the planet, but more gripping.

I tried to think about something else. Like the comlink in front of us, which was now broadcasting staticky blaster fire.

“Goddammit!” Hubri exclaimed.

“This droid needs maintenance, send him to block E4,” a distorted voice said, presumably a stormtrooper. Through his helmet and comm, the voice was muffled and hard to make out, but we managed to secure a location for Fry.

Lyrilis stood up from behind our shady rock and began walking towards the excavation site. I jumped up after her with an inkling of the idea she had in mind. We approached a man in a clean uniform and helmet covering the top of his head. “What are you all doing here?” he asked.

Lyrilis gave a small wave of her fingers, “We’re droid mechanics. We were hired by the Empire to help out on this dig site.”

The man looked around, baffled. “That’s ridiculous, why would the Empire have hired someone when they have perfectly good mechanics already onsite?”

I stepped closer to him and focused my mind on my words, giving my own wave of my fingers, “She’s telling the truth.”

The man’s shoulders relaxed and his eyebrows unfurrowed. “She’s telling the truth,” he muttered.

I remembered the others still sitting behind the rock. I raised my voice slightly, hoping they would hear, “There are others who will be catching up shortly.”

“There are others who will be catching up shortly,” he repeated, nodding along.

I sensed Hubri, Salak, and Gordon behind me all shuffling around for a moment before walking up to join us. We didn’t exactly look like a group of mechanics, but I hoped the mind trick would hold long enough for this to not be a problem.

“Follow me,” the man said, leading the group into the temple. To anyone else on the excavation site, it was likely an odd scene, but luckily, no one said anything as we were brought to the entrance.

The air inside the temple was cool, a welcome change from the burning air outside. It was barely lit. Electric lights were placed every few meters and I imagined my ocular-reliant companions likely had some difficulty seeing. I silently mused at the idea of Salak harmlessly missing a step or tripping on a rock--karma for his joke earlier. The man lead us to an elevator. “This will take you to the droid maintenance block,” he said, his words still murmured and quiet from the mind effect I had pulled on him.

He punched in a code from outside the elevator and the elevator began moving, leaving himself behind, which made me feel more comfortable. I didn’t know how he would react once the effect wore off and I didn't want to be there when it happened. The elevator moved down several floors before stopping and moving horizontally briefly, like it was moving along a grid.

The elevator dinged. Fry, ridiculous slugthrower in hand, stood between the elevator and a group of stormtroopers with their blasters trained on Fry. I didn’t want to press my luck on using the Force to persuade the stormtroopers. I also didn’t think it would work with a droid pointing a weapon at them.

We turned on the acting. “Is this droid attacking you?” Salak gasped. I pulled out my own blaster and pointed it at Fry.

“Must be defective,” Lyrilis scoffed.

Fry turned around to us. I mouthed at him, _play along!_ “H-Ha! More targets for me to shoot!” he shouted.

“We’ll turn him off,” I said. I kept my blaster on Fry to play up the danger and quickly flipped the switch on the back of Fry’s neck. Fry’s heavy metal body collapsed onto me and nearly crushed the breath from me. I dragged him over to a table and laid him down.

The stormtroopers pointed to two other droids in the corner of the room--an astromech anxiously spinning in place and a protocol droid missing much of its lower half, his legs set next to him. “Since the Empire sent you all here, these two are also in need of repairs,” one of the stormtroopers explained.

“Understood,” Salak nodded. “We’ll get right to work.” He walked over to Fry’s body on the table and began to examine it.

“I’ll work on the astromech,” I announced. “Who wants to take the protocol droid?”

Hubri shrugged. “I’ll give it a shot.”

We got to work on our respective droids. The astromech sputtered out strings of Binary as it spun on its wheels. The poor guy was scared. Luckily for him, I had seen the exact problem before. The movement chip was stuck. It was a common enough defect in R4 models as the Empire started trying to cut manufacturing costs. DeNav employed any droids it could get its hands on cheaply, which on the one hand meant I had to repair quite a number of droids, but it also meant I gained the experience of repairing lots of different droids.

Unluckily for the little guy, the best fix was a quick whack to his cranial structure to force the chip to reset itself. It was cheaper than replacing the chip, and even quicker. I took the wrench from a nearby toolkit and gave the best whack I could without leaving a dent in his metal head. The droid stopped in his tracks as the wrench connected with his head. The droid moved back on its wheels--then forwards again, in a straight line. It let out an excited chirp and began wheeling around me. His way of saying ‘thank you’.

“You’re all better now, little guy,” I smiled at him, giving his head a little pat. He chirped contently in Binary under my hand.

I look over to Hubri. She was managing to get the protocol droid’s wires all sorted out pretty well. I decided to go over at what Salak was doing with Fry, since I had a little more investment in Fry than some Imperial protocol unit.

I reached the table and saw inside of Fry as Salak worked. I almost laughed when I saw the contents of the droid’s chassis. I had to force my jaw to close as I took in the things stored inside him--an alcohol flask, a stuffed child’s toy, and a small bag of sand were all hooked up to wires as if they were parts. “How is he functioning?” I asked, whispering so the stormtroopers wouldn’t hear. I was in a state of shock as I tried to reason his odd insides.

“I… have no idea,” Salak said.

I counted up the parts he did have, since it was faster than counting the ones he didn’t. “No logic computer. Half a motivator,” I listed, shocked.

“What should I do?” Salak asked. “I don’t want to mess with anything since it all _seems_ to work.”

“Don’t mess with it. Just…” I thought for a moment. “I have a plan,” I whispered quieter. Salak leaned closer. “Pretend he’s too broken to fix here. We need to take him with us.”

Salak gave a quick nod. He beckoned over the stormtroopers. “Sirs, we need to take this droid with us. There’s too much damage to fix in a cave.”

“You’ll have to report to the overseer for that,” the stormtrooper answered.

I tried to suppress a curse. Salak nodded, “Understood. We should bring the droid with us when we see him, correct?”

The stormtroopers looked at each other. “If you want. We’ve never really had an unfixable droid down here,” one answered.

“I’ll just put on a restraining bolt and power him up then,” Salak smiled, his white teeth contrasting with his blue skin. The stormtroopers moved back to their position against the far wall and Salak pretended to affix Fry with an imaginary restraining bolt. He powered Fry up. “Act restrained,” Salak whispered to Fry, his voice hissing through his teeth.

Fry, smartly, didn’t say anything.

Hubri finished with her protocol droid, now with both its legs functional. “We need to bring this droid to the overseer,” I called over to her, pointing to Fry.

Hubri looked at me which a confused scowl. “Why?”

“Need to request him to be brought off-world for special repairs,” Salak said.

Hubri’s eyes widened in understanding and she nodded.

Lyrilis, who had been watching with Gordon by the elevator, called over to us. “Need to bring him with us?” she asked, doing her part to play along.

“Sure do,” Salak said.

“We’ll just be taking this elevator,” I smiled to the stormtroopers as we piled in.

“Wait,” the stormtroopers said, approaching the elevator. “We need to key in the overseer’s office to the console.”

They pressed some buttons into a keypad outside the elevator and the door closed.

“Damn it,” Salak said once the doors were shut. “I was hoping they would just tell us where it is so we could avoid it.”

I sighed. “No use in that now.”

It was a little cramped in the elevator with all of us, especially when all of us included Gordon. Lyrilis put the hood of her jacket up next to me. She must not have felt good about what we were about to encounter.

“Y’all didn’t take anything, did ya?” Fry asked.


	7. What the Temple Holds

The elevator dinged and the doors opened in front of us, revealing a small office on the other side. Only a desk sat in the room, and on the far wall sat two red banners with the symbol of the Empire on them.

A blue-skinned Nautolan sat behind the desk--the overseer, presumably, but I was surprised to a nonhuman in such a position in the Empire. His large, black eyes blinked slowly. “You all are the droid mechanics, yes?” he asked as we entered his office, cautiously.

“That’s correct,” Salak said.

There was something around the Nautolan that bothered me, but I couldn’t place it. It was hard to sense anything with the constant hum of the dark side. “Thank you all for fixing those droids, but it seems there’s one you couldn’t fix?”

Salak pushed Fry forward. “This one,” he said. “We’d like to request bringing him with us for more extensive repairs.”

“You can take him wherever you like,” the overseer replied, “seeing as he’s not one of our droids.” I felt a twinge of danger. I had figured this is how this would go, but I hated seeing myself be right. “There are Force-sensitive among you.”

My spine stiffened. The twinge of danger now felt more like a punch. While the eye coverings Lyrilis and I wore were enough to give him a visual clue, the feeling around him nagged further in my mind. Lyrilis spoke, defiant, “What does that matter to you, someone’s connection to the universe around them?”

“I am an Inquisitor of the Empire,” he explained. “It is my job to find those Force-sensitives the Empire has no use for and snuff them out.” He pointed a finger to Lyrilis. “Come forward, Lyrilis Vann. I know who you are.”

Lyrilis pursed her lips and cautiously stepped forward. “You know nothing about me,” she spat.

“I know you were a Jedi before the Order crumbled under their own crimes, and I know you are Miralukan, like your friend,” he pointed to me. “Why not remove your eye cover and prove me wrong?”

Lyrilis was still for a moment in front of us. She carefully raised her hands to pull her hood down and reached for the knot of fabric at the back of her head. Heat began rising from her body, like she was a flame. Her fists behind her head began letting off white-hot sparks from in between her fingers. She shot her hands out in front of her, and flames appeared on the ground around the Inquisitor, the legs of his pants catching. The heat of her body began to cool and I pulled the blaster from my holster without a thought.

The Nautolan shrieked in pain. “You’ll pay, Jedi scum!” he roared, attempting to pat out the fire with his hands, but the fabric continued to burn. He pulled a hilt from his belt and ignited a crimson-red blade, like blood. The hum of darkness I had heard around me turned to loud nagging as he readied a lightsaber stance.

The next moments were a blur of thoughts and poorly aimed shots, hoping anything would land. Gordon charged forwards at the Inquisitor, swinging his axe. Fry ran up the Inquisitor, canteen of blue goo in hand, and punched the Inquisitor's face, though I wasn't sure how much damage he'd really dealt.

Lyrilis ignited her pike and she held her hand out towards the Inquisitor. The Inquisitor’s body floated and followed the motion of her hand--directly into the ceiling with a loud _smack_. His body fell to the floor and he was still for a moment. There was a second of stillness as we paused, watching him pick himself up off the ground. We held our weapons tightly, all of them trained on him.

The Inquisitor wiped the blood that trickled from a gash on his cheek. “I wanted to end this quickly, but it seems you all want to make this more painful than it needs to be.”

I felt the Force around him gather--corruption and darkness enveloped him. Hubri’s voice called out to my left, “He’s going to-!”

I was knocked off my feet and sent flying backward by a burst of energy. The same corruption I felt gathering around the Inquisitor passed over me in waves. My back hit the wall behind me.

My vision was blurry and unfocused as I managed to maintain consciousness. My ears rang from the pressure. I focused my vision on Lyrilis, still on her feet. She stood in front of the Inquisitor, her fist outstretched in front of her. The Inquisitor grasped at his throat. She was choking him.

I wanted to yell at her to stop, but my voice couldn’t find the words. I reached for my blaster in front of me and aimed it at the Inquisitor’s head. I looked for an opening and I watched the bolt fly towards his head. Lyrilis dropped her grip as her the bolt found its mark against his skull. The Inquisitor dropped to the floor, limp.

I exhaled, the act both filled with relief and pain. I managed back up to my feet and put the blaster back in the holster on my thigh. I looked over at the Inquisitor’s body and felt a shock of emotion and questions burst through my mind. I understood the anger Lyrilis felt. There was the quiet whisper of hatred that seemed to only get louder the further into the temple we went that likely drove her to her actions. It was consuming me, too, as I stared at his body. I wanted to scream. I could barely hold down the urge.

I spat at him. “You won’t hurt anyone anymore,” I whispered.

I felt the regret and guilt like it hit me in the face. I had lied and done things I wasn’t proud of before in order to keep myself above water, but I had never acted out of so much malice.

 _All beings return to the Force when they depart from life,_ my mother had told me when I was younger and more innocent. Perhaps my mother was the innocent one, I thought. She never had to face anything like this. She was likely shot down by clones before she ever had the chance to experience something like this.

At least I preferred to think of it that way.

I still felt the guilt of my actions in the bottom of my stomach, turning around and making me sick. Or maybe the nausea was from adrenaline withdrawing from my system. My jaw hurt, and I smelt blood. I touched my nose to find a warm, steady trickle of blood coming from it. I wiped it away with the back of my hand, the red smearing over my pale skin.

“Fry’s broken for real this time,” Salak called out, kneeling next to the droid’s body, his lights off.

I knelt down next to him. “I can help repair him,” I whispered.

“That wave of air must’ve knocked some circuits loose,” Salak explained. “What was that?”

“The Force,” Lyrilis growled. “The dark side of it, at least.” She was still standing in her position over the Inquisitor’s body. She slung her pike back over her shoulder.

Salak raised an eyebrow and looked as if he wanted to say something, but he remained silent. We got to work on Fry. After reconnecting a few wires and resetting his start-up module, we attempted to get him running, to our success. His lights turned on and his head turned from side to side as he spoke, “Boy howdy, that was a fight! I finished that villain off with a single punch!”

“Sure you did, Fry,” I whispered. I wasn't in the mood for his antics. I was too preoccupied with the gripping fear welling in my stomach. The Empire was still hunting Force-sensitives.

I spotted Lyrilis slumped in a corner, her hood back over her hair. “Can you handle the rest of this?” I asked Salak.

Salak gave a tight smile, “With Gordon’s help, I’m sure I’ll manage. Get over here, Gordon!”

Gordon looked up from the pickings he’d taken off the Inquisitor’s body and desk, “Me?”

I sat down next to Lyrilis, my back against the wall. She looked up from the ground and at me. “I couldn’t do it,” she whispered. “I had the chance to face the Empire and I fell to their level of cowardice. I couldn’t face him as I should’ve.” Her voice sounded more shaken than angry.

I thought for a moment about my words. I never had much experience comforting people, but despite this, I couldn’t leave her torment herself. I put a gentle hand on her shoulder, hoping she wouldn’t shrug away my touch. “You faced him well. We all struggled. You did the most to stop him.”

She shook her head. “It’s just… I don’t know how to walk the path I want to,” she whispered. She said it so quietly, I almost wondered if she meant for me to hear it.

“The fight is over. Let’s try to think of what we need to do next.”

She looked back at me. I could almost feel her Force focus on me, and then, a lightness surrounded her. Tension melted from around her. She gave a small smile. “We should rest for as long as we can here. I don’t think anyone will be coming down for a while.”

* * *

 

We rested as long as we dared, taking turns watching the elevator for activity to ensure we wouldn’t be bothered. After an hour or so, Hubri stood up from her place against the wall.“Are we all ready to keep moving?” she asked. “I’m getting anxious. Someone will realize something’s wrong sooner or later.”

Fry, now functional again, spoke up, “Where to, partner?”

Gordon produced a datapad from a comically large pocket. “I found this on the Inquisitor’s body. I was gonna ask about it earlier, but everyone seemed tired.”

Salak took the datapad from Gordon’s hand. “You big idiot!” he exclaimed in humor. “Is it encrypted?” He typed into the datapad. “Damn it. It is.”

I walked over to the center of the room, where Salak and Gordon stood. “I can give it a shot,” I offered. Salak handed the datapad to me and I got to work. The encryption was weak--the Empire likely never expected anyone to get their hands on it. I quickly got into the datapad.

“You know your way around electronics, don’t you?” Salak remarked.

I gave a dry laugh. “No, I just know how to get into places I’m not supposed to be in. Like Ancient Sith temples, apparently.” I found a map file on the datapad. It displayed a grid, labeled with letters on that top and numbers down the side. Only a few squares had notes marking them of interest. I tapped through them--the mechanics’ garage at E4, a statue would be in L10. The square to the bottom rightmost edge had a note. I tapped it. “ARTIFACT--AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY”, it read.

“Think I found our artifact,” I informed my companions. “Block Z14.”

“Let’s head down there and get this over with,” Hubri replied. “I don’t like this planet.”

 

We took the elevator down and over, passing several blocks, hoping the elevator was on a direct path and wouldn’t stop to pick anyone up. We were almost to our goal. I didn’t want to encounter some extra hitch.

To my relief, the elevator took us all the way to Z14. As the elevator approached the block, I felt the dread and hatred chant louder and louder in my mind. Trying to distract myself from it felt futile at that point.

The door to the elevator opened up and the sensation intensified. It nearly overwhelmed my senses. My vision threatened to blur, distorted by the severe screaming of hysterical emotion. I felt dizzy and had to keep myself from vomiting… and yet there was something sweet and inviting in the feeling. I knew I had to resist, but part of me whispered, asking why.

In the center of the room sat a pedestal, and around the pedestal in a perfect semi-circle was a pile of corpses--many just skeletons, some still decaying. Some wore stormtrooper armor, others wrapped in fabric decaying with their bodies. Some seemed ancient. The smell of rot only added to the nausea I felt.

The pedestal itself held a small pyramid, glowing as red as the Inquisitor’s blade had been and humming with the hatred that overwhelmed my mind.

“Think that’s our artifact?” Fry asked.

“It has to be,” Hubri said. “I don’t trust it, though.”

“I’ll go get it,” Fry replied.

“No, wait!” Lyrilis called after him.

It was too late. The droid had already jogged into the room and approached the pedestal. He picked it up and examined it in his hand. He held it up to show us. “It’s really cool up close!” he called out to us.

“GIVE ME MY LIGHTSABER,” a horrid voice echoed through the room, originating from the artifact.

Gordon pushed through us and began walking forward, a lightsaber in his hand. The one the Inquisitor had used. I didn’t notice him take it while we were resting in the Inquisitor’s office.

Lyrilis ran up behind him and tried to stop him, pulling on his arm. “Gordon, whatever the hell you think you’re going to do, don’t do it. That’s a Sith artifact, we shouldn’t trust it,” she begged.

“He wants his lightsaber, though,” Gordon replied, brushing Lyrilis off his arm. He walked up to Fry and the artifact.

“Now partner, maybe we shouldn’t-” Fry started, but Gordon had already touched the hilt of the lightsaber to the artifact in Fry’s hand.

A cloud of red burst from the pyramid. The vapor surrounded Gordon and he yelled out, his muscles going tense as he fought against something in his body. Fry dropped the artifact and scrambled back towards us, his mechanical limbs barely operating as fast as he was trying to move. Gordon’s body relaxed and he pulled the vibroaxe from his back. His beady eyes glared at us, a glint of yellow glowing from across the room.

“I feel like killing you guys,” he said, quietly, in a voice that only sounded half like his own. “I _really_ feel like killing you guys!”

There was a horrible air of the dark side within him as he ignited the lightsaber still in his hand. I drew my blaster from its holster.

“Lyrilis, try drawing Gordon out of this!” Hubri suggested.

Lyrilis ignited her lightsaber. “How?”

“I don’t know, you’re the almighty Jedi!”

Lyrilis lowered her head and held her hand out towards Gordon. He started charging towards us. I held my breath, waiting for Lyrilis to do something. Her hand shook out in front of her. She let out a horrible scream and clutched her head. “Lyrilis!” I called out.

Her pain seemed passed as quickly as it came on, her face now beaded with sweat. “I’m _not_ doing that again!” she growled, holding her pike in front of her.

I watched Gordon’s saber hand. Maybe if I could separate the saber and the demon inside him, it would break its hold on Gordon, I thought. “May we shoot to injure?” I yelled to Salak, aiming my blaster at Gordon’s hand.

I glanced over to Salak. His face looked conflicted. He exhaled. “Go ahead!” he called back.

I looked back to Gordon and I took my shot. The blaster bolt sailed just past his hand. I fired again, all of my shots missing. Perhaps I had gotten ahead of my abilities as a marksman. I set my blaster to stun.

Gordon reached our group and I dashed away from the reach of his weapons, firing off a few attempts to stun him. Gordon swung at Hubri with the lightsaber, barely missing her head. “You singed my horn!” she shrieked, shooting at him with her crossbow.

“Stop! Don’t hurt him!” Salak yelled, firing a stun shot from his rifle.

The energy absorbed into Gordon and his body flashed blue before falling to the ground with a loud _thunk_.

I caught my breath as I watched his body, the cloud of the red slowly rising out of his body. “I think it’s over,” Lyrilis said, relaxing her shoulders.

A laugh burst through the room from the cloud of red, reforming over Gordon. It crackled with purple energy. I aimed my blaster at the cloud and shot at it. The bolt sailed harmlessly through it. Another horrible laugh echoed and sparks of purple flew out at Salak. The energy coursed through his body and he yelled out in pain.

Lyrilis took off towards the crimson artifact, still sitting on the ground. She slammed the end of her pike into it repeatedly, each movement becoming more and more desperate.

The elevator dinged behind us. I turned around, my blaster aimed at the door. I waited for the door to open up to a squad of stormtroopers. Instead, a man stood behind the doors. Chak strode out of the elevator and took off his jacket, dropping it on the ground behind him. An orange blade emerged out of a hilt in his hand, sparks shooting out from the weapon as if it were malfunctioning. Chak launched himself as the cloud of mist, slashing his blade through it. The red vapor dissipated into the air around us. He pushed Lyrilis out of the way of the artifact and picked it up. He closed his eyes and the artifact exploded in his hand.

“A Sith holocron,” he said.

Lyrilis held her mouth open, as if she were trying to form her sentence. “You- You’re… You’re a Jedi?” she whispered.

“You shouldn’t have touched that.”

“You’re a Jedi,” Lyrilis repeated.

“Not anymore.” Chak began to walk back to the elevator.

“Chak’ard, wait, you have to understand. I haven’t seen another Jedi in years,” Lyrilis called after him and she tried to catch up with his long strides.

“Go away, kid,” he said, his voice cold. “It’s better for all of us to move on from the Jedi Order.” Lyrilis stopped in her tracks at his words. I felt a twinge of hurt in her, and her expression turned cold. Chak stopped at the elevator. “Everyone good to walk?”

“I’ll need some help with Gordon,” Salak said, trying to lift the Herglic himself. Hubri shouldered some of the weight under herself. Salak nodded gratitude towards her.

“Alright,” Chak sighed, “let’s get out of here.”

We piled into the elevator and began our ascent to the top of the temple.

“How do you plan to get us out past the Imperials?” I asked.

Chak shifted his shoulders to try to find comfort in the cramped elevator. “Maya’s taken care of them.”

The elevator let us out and we left the cold inside of the temple and reemerged into the blistering heat of the desert. I understood what Chak meant by Maya taking care of the Imperials as I took in the scene outside the temple. A pile of Imperial bodies, all neatly placed together, sat in the middle of the archeology site and blaster fire seemed to have scored the outside of the temple.

To my relief, Chak’s ship sat nearby, Maya standing by the boarding ramp. Her huge rifle was still slung over her shoulder--likely the reason for the dead Imperials. “You guys get the artifact?” she called to us as we approached.

“It’s been destroyed,” Chak grumbled. “Too dangerous to bring back.”

“Well, that technically constitutes a job finished!” Maya said. “Let’s get out of the heat.”

We boarded Chak’s freighter, Hubri and Salak carrying Gordon on, and before long we found ourselves sailing out of the planet’s atmosphere and into the safe jump zone. For the first time since crash landing on the desert planet, I felt the tension of the dark side melt from my mind. It was quiet and peaceful.

Exhaustion began to overtake my mind and muscles and before long, I fell asleep in the common area, my eye covering still tied around my face.


	8. Flight to Felucia

I woke up a few hours later to Fry and Salak talking loudly about something I didn’t catch, or care to. There was a nagging soreness in my muscles as I stretched my sleepy limbs. The awkward position I fell asleep in likely didn’t help to keep my body from aching. I was mentally groggy as I looked around the common area. Gordon still slept on the couch across from me, the darkness that possessed him now completely gone. Not far from him, Lyrilis was nodding off in her seat, elbows leaned onto the table in front of her in an attempt to keep her head elevated. Hubri stood in the doorway to the cockpit. She seemed to be chatting with Chak and getting along decently.

“You awake?” Maya asked. “I can’t tell with your blindfold.”

“Yeah, I’m awake,” I said, “but you wouldn’t be able to tell with it off either.”

“That’s true,” she giggled. “Congrats on your first job well done.”

“We wouldn’t have done it if Chak hadn’t come down into that temple.”

Maya nodded, her tightly-curled hair following the action. “He’s pretty good at what he does,” she agreed.

“What does he do?” I asked. I didn’t know what Maya knew. I didn’t want to ask directly. “Besides working for Organa, I guess.”

She shrugged. “Dunno,” she said. “I just know that he works for the senator. He told me he was a veteran of the Clone Wars, but that’s about it.”

He wasn’t lying, at least, from what I could tell. I did find it odd that the man I had sensed so much power in not even a few hours prior now seemed to hold no Force sensitivity, from what I could sense in the cockpit. Only Hubri’s Force sensitivity stuck out to me in there, which still… not bothered me exactly, but the foreign nature of whatever training she’d received was not something I’d ever sensed before. It was beyond what I knew as traditional, at least with the Jedi and my Miraluka heritage as my admittedly limited point of perspective. “So what about you?” I asked Maya.

She shrugged. “About the same,” she said. “Little too young for the ‘veteran of the Clone Wars’ part, but I’ve seen enough to know the Empire has to go. I was just a pilot before this.”

“I’m a pilot, too,” I said. “Flew for a company before that bar fight a few days ago.”

Maya smiled. “Well, welcome aboard. We always need more pilots.”

I spent the rest of the jump dozing in and out of conversation with Maya and watching the scenes unfold in front of me: Gordon (now awake) having his injuries checked by Salak; Fry messing with his parts; Hubri cleaning her oversized crossbow; Lyrilis (also now awake) silently turning her rock over in her hand. Quiet, self-imposed busy work to keep ourselves preoccupied for the final leg of the jump to Alderaan.

* * *

  
  


Once on Alderaan, we were led through the palace once again by a housekeeper. Chak and Maya stayed behind with the  _ Stalwart _ . We were escorted to the same antique-filled office and were seated in the same seats as our first visit to the palace. It was hard to avoid déjà vu as we waited for Senator Organa once again in awkward silence, though this time the silence felt more out of exhaustion.

After a few moments, the senator entered the room. He was as elaborately dressed as when we last saw him, but somehow his senatorial robes seemed simple in the grand scheme of the palace we sat in. I’m sure we stuck out like a sore thumb against the opulence.

“My new friends, give me a full report,” he started. He seemed like he was in a rush. “How did it go?”

“The artifact was a Sith holocron with a dark side Force spirit trapped inside,” Lyrilis explained. “I doubt we saw the full extent of its powers, but we saw enough to determine it was incredibly dangerous.”

“And I presume it was destroyed?” Senator Organa asked.

I spoke up. “Chak’ard destroyed it.”

“Then it is no more,” the senator declared, smiling. “As promised, you all will be paid for your services. If you recall, I assigned you another mission on Felucia. You all may rest and recuperate as long as you need, but I advise urgency, as this mission is dealing with a prisoner of the Empire that may not be alive much longer. Any questions?”

“Can we rely on Chak’ard and his ship for this mission as well?” Lyrilis asked.

“Yes, Chak will accompany you all for this one as well, but Maya will be staying behind. She has other business,” Senator Organa said. “If there are no further questions, I must be going. May the Force be with you all.”

With that, Organa hurried out. The senator didn’t waste any time. “Shall we be going?” Salak asked, a little rushed himself. I remembered his previous urgency regarding this mission before Korriban.

“The senator said we should take some time to rest and prepare,” I said. “Let’s go look around the city a bit.”

Gordon spoke up. “Yeah, I could look at some adjustments for this,” he said, bending his cybernetic arm.

“How’d you get that?” Hubri asked.

“Bad fight,” Gordon answered. “How else do you end up with missing limbs?”

Hubri considered his response. “That’s fair.”

 

The market outside the palace was buzzing with activity. Some permanent buildings intermixed with temporary structures and carts to make a patchwork of commerce and interesting would-be purchases. The sun on Alderaan was beginning to make its descent towards the treeline. The air was cool and welcome on my skin after the heat of the desert.

We split up, Fry and Gordon visiting a droid mechanic shop, Lyrilis and Salak checking out a cantina. Hubri and I decided to look at an arms shop next to the cantina. In my experience on Nar Shaddaa, an arms shop next to a bar is both lucrative and disastrous, but I figured on Alderaan this placement likely lead to fewer issues than it would in more lawless systems. 

We entered the shop, a small little installation with a long counter separating the customer from the shopkeeper and all the weapons. Glass containers displayed various sporting weapons and accessories. I wondered if the illegitimate permit I had on Nar Shaddaa would even be able to fool the salesperson. “I need bolts for my crossbow,” she announced to the shopkeeper, taking the crossbow from her back to show him.

“Wookiee crossbow, eh?” he asked. “Those don’t come cheap, and I’m afraid I can’t sell any to you. Restricted weapons.”

Hubri lowered her voice to the shopkeeper. “We work for Senator Bail Organa. Does that change anything?”

The shopkeeper looked at her and checked a datapad. His eyes squinted at Hubri and then back at the datapad. “Very well, I can get you those bolts.”

I looked over the assortment of pistols, rifles, and other various firearms on display. They looked nice, but I felt weird replacing my blaster. I’d carried the same one since I purchased it when I was seventeen. It felt like bad luck to buy a new one. I turned to Hubri, who was waiting for the shopkeeper to come back with her ammo. “I’m going to catch up with Lyrilis and Salak in the cantina,” I said.

“Have fun,” she replied.

I walked over to the cantina next door. It was small and lit with purple lights that fell over the sleek, modern seating. A musician played in the corner. His accompanying singer seemed to be on her break, sitting at a booth with a drink and a cigarette. People were beginning to fill the place as the night got closer.

I searched for Lyrilis and Salak, sensing them at the bar. I sat down in the empty seat next to Lyrilis. She smiled at me behind the glass to her lips, but I could tell something was bothering her. I ordered my own drink and listened in on Salak what was saying. “We all struggled in that fight,” he said. “I don’t understand your Jedi magic, but I’m sure you did what you thought was right.”

“You don’t get it at all,” she sighed. “I was angry. I fought with anger.”

“I don’t get why that’s bad,” Salak said. His eyebrows furrowed around his red eyes in confusion.

Lyrilis downed the last sip of her drink. “It means I gave in.”

The bartender handed me my drink and I looked to Lyrilis. “Don’t blame yourself,” I said. “It was a hard fight. It’s hard not to be angry at the Empire.”

She looked at me, her expression blank and ambiguous. She was quiet for a moment before sighing. “I just have to do better next time,” she declared.

* * *

  
  


I found myself on the same seat on the  _ Stalwart _ several hours into our jump to Felucia. Despite Felucia’s position in the Outer Rim, Chak informed us the jump would be short, though we still had enough time for a nap and some rest.

Salak sat in front of a computer terminal, researching the planet on backed-up files from the HoloNet. Fry helped, though I think Fry’s definition of “help” didn’t align well with most people’s definition. Hubri and Gordon were sitting quietly, minding their own business, like I was. Lyrilis sat in meditation once again. I wanted to talk with her--I was still hoping to get to know her--but I didn’t want to disturb her meditation.

Like before, I watched her pocket begin to glow as she meditated. This time, however, she didn’t break her concentration as it glowed brighter and brighter. I could feel a harmony between the rock and her in the Force. It was calm and mutual. After several minutes, the glow in her pocket dimmed and she stirred from her restful position. She pulled the crystal from her pocket and turned it over in her hand.

“Hey, what is that?” I asked, quietly. “I’ve seen you mess with it before.”

“It’s… I don’t know exactly,” she said, staring at it.

“It glows when you meditate,” I said. “Is it a focusing crystal?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s not. But… I get the feeling I should protect it.”

“It’s a rock.”

Lyrilis put it back into her pocket. “A special rock. I think.”

I questioned silently what Korriban must’ve done to her mind. I was kidding, mostly. I knew the Force had a lot more to it than my mom or my teacher could’ve ever taught me, but I still found the whole thing… odd, yet intriguing. I could sense the Force on it, but it was indescribable. I knew kyber crystals could be sensed in the Force, but this was too lifelike to be a simple crystal. 

“We’ll be pulling out of hyperspace soon,” Chak’s voice called from the cockpit.

We started to get ready for landing, though I would be lying if I said most of us didn’t expect another escape pod departure. I felt the gentle jolt of the  _ Stalwart _ leaving hyperspace and heard Chak yell from the cockpit.

“Dammit!” Chak shouted and I was knocked off balance by a sudden sharp drop. 

I managed to get to the doorway of the cockpit and saw a massive Star Destroyer fill the space outside the viewport. I’d never seen one so close and I was suddenly grateful I never had. “That thing’s huge!” I exclaimed.

“Thanks for the observation!” Chak yelled back. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you really are blind under that thing!”

We plummeted past the Star Destroyer and into the planet’s atmosphere. I felt Hubri behind me, clutching my shoulder and entrance to the cockpit. “We’re coming in too fast, gravity is going to overtake the controls! Pull up or we’re going to be a scrapheap!” she yelled.

“If you’re going backseat pilot, get the hell out of my cockpit!” Chak pulled frantically jerked the control stick, desperately trying to pull the ship into a safer descent. It was a little too late and we came in too fast. I was knocked off my feet and fell to the ground as the ship made contact with the planet’s surface, skidding along the ground and plowing over foliage in its wake.

After several long moments, the shaking and skidding of the ship stopped and I managed to my feet.

“Everyone okay?” Lyrilis asked.

Hubri rubbed the back of her neck. “Could’ve done without the rough landing, but I think I’ll live.”

“The droid is crushing me!” Salak complained.

“You grabbed onto me, partner,” Fry argued, getting up off Salak. He looked around the ship. “Where in tarnation did my hat go?”

Lyrilis sighed as she brushed off her clothing. “This is why I don’t like spaceflight.”

I looked out the viewport to see a dense forest outside the ship, full of odd but thriving life. My view was interrupted as Chak pushed past me and made his way to the boarding ramp. “Need to assess the damage,” he muttered as he brushed past me in his gruff, hurried manner, cursing the Empire in the same breath.

We followed him down the ramp and I looked at the ship’s exterior. “Damn it!” Chak yelled. “Damn Star Destroyer!” The ship looked rough, but still flyable if the engines weren’t too jostled around in the landing. “I was going to join you all, but I’m going to have to fix this now,” he grumbled.

“Really? You were going to join us?” Hubri asked, her tone challenging.

“Let’s not hassle our pilot,” Gordon said.

The air was thick with a humid, sticky heat that made me sweat under my jacket. It was great for the cool interiors of starships, but it wasn’t meant for the horrid humidity of jungle biomes. I tied the jacket around my waist and exposed my arms and shoulders to the horrid moist air.

I tuned out my loud companions and the climate and turned my senses to the planet around me. It was a sharp difference from Korriban. Everything was overwhelmingly alive and thriving. It was vibrant and the air and Force around me felt clean. Given the places I found myself living through my life, I wasn’t used to this much nature.

I sensed further into the Force and sensed a trail: a clearing through the trees. My mind wandered to how odd it was to be using the Force again so much after so long. For years, I never dared reach into my senses beyond my normal sight. I was too paranoid. My parents said the Empire likely would be searching for anyone with their names associated with the Temple. That meant them, and it meant me. Add being Miraluka to that and I doubt I would’ve lived long if I’d stayed on Coruscant.

I shook myself from my wavering and troubling thoughts and focused again on the trail. Some creatures frequented it, I sensed, meaning it must lead somewhere. There was a vague sense of danger along with it, but it was our only lead. I pointed it out to my companions. “There’s a trail. Should we follow it?”

“I sense it, too,” Lyrilis said. “I think it’s a good start to get to this prison.”

“Wait,” Salak said. “I want to document the wildlife.”

“Again?” Hubri asked.

Salak nodded, excited. “There’s so much life on Felucia that scientists believe we’ve only discovered about half of it.” He held up a cam and took a photo of a primate curiously checking out our wreckage.

“This the reason ya wanted to come here so bad?” Fry asked.

“Oh no,” Salak replied. “I do believe we should hurry and rescue this Imperial defector. This is just a bonus.”

“Come on, Salak,” Gordon said. “You can take your pictures on the way.”


	9. Under the Overgrowth

We started down the trail, leaving Chak behind to fix his ship. Fry lead us into the treeline, as if he’d taken up the position of leader. No one protested this, as letting him believe he was leading was easier than the alternative. We walked under a dense canopy of tree branches and the tops of huge mushrooms. Large flowers in bright blues and pinks grew up the bark of the trees, their stems weaving into the texture, and oversized ferns dotted the side of the path. The smell of plants and dirt hung in the air with the moist humidity like a powerful perfume.

The path seemed well-traveled, which both reassured me of its relative safety and caused concern that we may run into someone less-than-friendly. I kept my senses on high-alert, reaching out for anything--or anyone--that could be a threat to us. My mind was focused far ahead, gathering the vague feeling of something dangerous, when Hubri grabbed my arm with sudden urgency.

I looked down in front of me. Pools of yellow and bright green bubbled by my feet, intersecting our safe path. It reeked like sulfur and rotting flesh, likely from animals and mindless Miraluka who slipped into the pools and found themselves painfully dissolved. Salts formed around the edges of the pools, neon yellow and white in color.

“Pay attention,” Hubri hissed.

Salak took a vial from his utility belt and shook out a small plant sample. He knelt down next to the pool and dipped the sample in. I watched as the material dissolved into brown sludge. He dropped the whole sample in and the plant quickly fell apart in the acid. I felt sudden gratitude for Hubri’s vigilance in place of my own.

Gordon took the axe from his back. “Let’s cut down a bridge.”

Salak shook his head. “Oh no, if you cut down any one of these plants, they will release a toxin that will kill us all faster than the acid, not to mention the acid would likely dissolve the bridge. And, as you saw, this is definitely acid.”

Hubri crossed her arms. “Interesting hypothesis, scientist, now what do we going to do about this?”

“Oh, I’m no scientist, I’m just an enthusiast,” Salak said. “I think we should consider--”

Lyrilis backed up a few meters and took off running towards the pools. She jumped at the edge, jamming the end of her pike into a pile of salt in between the puddles of acid to give herself the momentum to land safely on the other side of the pools.

“Consider what?” she called.

Salak stared at her, his red eyes wide. “I… Uh, that works, too, but what about the rest of us?” he yelled back.

She reached her hand out and I felt a lightness around me, like her presence in the Force gently surrounding me. She lifted me from my feet and carefully pulled me over the pools of acid. I tried my best to focus straight ahead at her so I wouldn’t consider the danger below me. Soon, she sat me down on the ground next to her. “Ah, uh,” I cleared my throat. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, no problem. I just figured you’d be able to help me with the rest of them,” she said before turning back to the rest of the group. “Who’s next?” she yelled.

Hubri decided to try her luck jumping across, vaulting herself with a tree branch as Lyrilis had. Lyrilis and I floated the rest across, having to make a combined effort to get Gordon’s mass over the acid. I couldn’t help but revel in the moment. It’d been years since I practiced the Force like that. The most I’d lifted since I’d found myself on Nar Shaddaa was a datapad or two. I decided not to admit that to my companions, who were counting on me to not drop them into sulfuric acid beneath them.

Salak crossed his arms once he was safe across the pools. “Care to know what my plan was?”

“Go for it,” Lyrilis said.

“So I was going to propose we find a way to make a solution to neutralize the acid and turn it to--” Lyrilis began walking away, down the trail again. “Hey, come back!” he yelled to her.

“Come on, we need to keep moving,” she called over her shoulder.

We continued along the trail, a few acid pools skirting the side of the path. They were colorful and pretty somehow, as long as they weren’t in our way. The vegetation changed slightly as we walked, with fewer mushrooms overhead and more trees with huge blue, translucent leaves overtook the sky above us, filtering in blue light over us.

Chak commed us a few times as we walked, giving us updates on the ship’s status and grumpy complaints about how slow we were moving. Hubri tried to argue with him, but it sounded more like banter than a heated exchange.

I sensed something approaching up ahead. Living beings, sentient, and the Force flowed through them with ease. They were trained in the Force, but not in any way I could identify. They came into view: five large bipedal creatures with large weapons made of bones held in their amphibian-like hands. Native Felucians, I guessed, but I’d never seen their kind before. They were muscular and maybe a meter taller than me. Their faces were covered in tentacles, burying any features they had under twitching strings of flesh. 

The Felucians raised their weapons at us and the leader--at least I presumed he was the leader given his decorative bright-green paint--spoke to us in a language I’d never heard.

“Hol’ up,” Fry said, pushing us aside. “I’ve got a handle on this.” Fry turned to the Felucians and spoke. The Felucians looked amongst others. They seemed to be growing impatient.

“You’re speaking gibberish!” Hubri yelled.

Fry shrugged. “Could be a language for all you know. It was worth a shot.” I guess whatever makeshift part replaced his translator unit didn’t know native Felucian.

The Felucian leader roared at us and charged forward. We all drew our weapons and prepared for a fight. I hated fighting over a language barrier, but I feared there was no way to resolve it peacefully as the Felucians charged at us. I aimed my blaster and fired at the green-painted leader, my blaster bolts barely missing his bizarre face. He stopped in place and reached his hand out. My blaster flew from my grip and into his hand. “Hey!” I yelled as the weapon slipped from my finger. I felt a flash of anger as the Felucian pointed the blaster at me.

I felt a surge of energy in me as I lifted the Felucian into the air and with a simple movement of my fingers, the Felucian fell to the ground, a sickening feeling passing over me as I heard his bones snap. The blaster in his hands skidded across the dirt and landed at my feet. I tried to push from my mind how easily I’d killed him and picked up my weapon from the ground. I aimed my blaster at another of the Felucians.

Flames came up around him, engulfing another in the same spark--I knew this trick to be one Lyrilis seemed fond of. I sensed her push another two together, disorienting them. Gordon swung at another with his axe, killing it with ease.

The three remaining Felucians sat on the ground, their fear suddenly apparent. Behind me, I felt Salak pull a trigger on his rifle and one of the Felucians, with a flash of panic, returned to the Force. I heard him reload the weapon.

“Stop! Stop!” Lyrilis said, stepping in front of Salak’s weapon. “They’re scared, they don’t want to fight anymore.” 

She turned off her pike and placed it on the ground before slowly approaching one of them. The Felucian kept his head down as she knelt in front of him and placed a hand on his shoulder. She lowered her head to match him and I could feel them communicate through the Force. Moments passed and she stood up, the Felucians rising with her. Silently, they gathered their dead and left through the jungle.

“What did you say?” I asked.

Lyrilis looked to me, sadness on her face. “I apologized and told them we won’t be here long,” she said.

“In the arena, we would’ve finished that fight,” Gordon said, putting the axe back on his back. “Dishonorable to leave a fight unfinished.”

“That wasn’t some exhibition fight,” Hubri retorted, a scowl on her face, “but they shouldn’t have run.”

“Let’s just keep going,” Lyrilis said, motioning us along.

We walked again along the path again, the vegetation remaining patchy as walked. We were silent, save for the few times Chak checked in, giving updates on the ship. Sublight engines were running, or so he thought. He wasn’t sure.

We came up to a village in the trees. There were homes and buildings built from and hollowed out of petrified mushrooms and trees. Several cooking fires sat around the small village, Felucians sitting beside them with meats and various mushrooms cooking over them. Two children ceased their playing once they sensed us and ran for the nearest doorway. I felt guilt creep into my heart.

A human man came out from the doorway. He was older and wearing clothes adorned with symbols of the Separatists. I guess not all of them left the various worlds they claimed for their federation.

“Are you here to slaughter the rest of them?” he called to us.

We were all silent. “We’re just passing through,” Salak said. “We’re an exploration crew, cataloging the wildlife here.”

“Well-armed scientists, you are,” the man said, eyeing the pike on Lyrilis’s shoulder. “My name is Vazus. I live here among the Felucians. I recommend you pass through here peacefully.”

Lyrilis bowed her head to the man, holding her pike in front of her. “We apologize for what we’ve done. We’re just passing through and will not cause you any more trouble. Forgive us.” It surprised me to see her act so… Jedi-like.

Vazus looked at her with curiosity. “Miraluka, are you? Haven’t seen your kind in quite a while, and now there’s two of you. I don’t suppose you’re a Jedi, too?” he asked me.

“No, I’m not,” I responded.

“Oh, I understand,” he said, giving a small wink. “Empire’s hunting you down. Don’t worry, I feel the same about the Empire as you do. After the war ended, it became clear the Republic must’ve been playing both sides.”

“Both sides?” Lyrilis asked, her brow knit.

“It was all a power grab,” Vazus said. “How do you think the Empire formed so quickly?”

“I… suppose.” Lyrilis was cautious in her response. It wasn’t clear if we were talking to a carefully-thought man or crazed loon with conspiracies.

“Jedi, you are welcome here, should you come in peace.” He gestured to the nearest cooking fire.

Lyrilis shook her head. “We must decline. We have to keep moving. Thank you for your generosity.” She bowed her head again.

“If you’re on Felucia again, don’t hesitate to come back here,” Vazus said.

We began on our way. “We’ll keep it in mind,” Lyrilis called as we left.

We walked away from the village. I couldn’t stop my mind from considering the symbols on the man’s simple clothes. In the Clone Wars, things seemed clear cut. Perhaps it was my teenaged naivety and the biased lens of the government-controlled news media, but it was always the Separatists versus the mighty Republic with the Jedi on their side. Many people, myself included, considered the Jedi so intertwined with the Republic, there was hardly a difference. I suppose to some, like Vazus, there was one.

 

The path we followed became smoother and more trafficked as we approached the lip of a large crater. Standing on the edge of it, hidden behind a few bushes, we peered into the divet in the land. In the center of the crater stood a small building, only two stories tall. If it was the prison, it no doubt went down underground. There was no way of knowing how big it truly was.

Four watchtowers sat evenly-spaced along the opposite side of the crater. “Snipers up there,” Hubri said. “Sense them?”

“Why are they all on one side?” I asked. “Doesn’t seem very secure.”

“Why question the Empire’s stupidity when it acts in your favor?” Lyrilis said, a smirk on her face.

I felt the high-pitched rumbling of TIE engines disrupt the air and we all ducked into the bushes as three fighters flew over our heads. They continued through the air, clearing the crater towards some further objective. “I don’t like how low they’re flying,” I commented.

“There’s a transport on the roof,” Salak pointed out, his finger trained on a white shuttle, its wings tucked up into a neat triangle. “We need to hurry.”

“Hurry?” Fry said. “Then what’re we waitin’ for?” He stood up from the bushes and started into the crater.

Salak quickly grabbed his metal arm. “What do you think you’re doing?” Salak hissed.

“Hurryin’ up!” Fry said, shaking Salak’s arm off. He dashed towards the nearest watchtower.

“Fry, you idiot!” Hubri called after him. “We should put a restraining bolt on him.”

Gordon waved after him as he scampered towards the tower.

I took a moment to assess how screwed we were.

Fry entered the tower and I lost a sense of him due to his distance and lack of organic Force. Droids and Force sight are tricky that way. 

“Look, let’s just follow him,” Lyrilis said. “Stick to the treeline and be a little more stealthy than him, but we shouldn’t leave him on his own.”

“Can’t believe I agree,” Hubri sighed.

We tiptoed along the side of the crater, out of sight of the snipers and far more careful than Fry was. We approached the tower, walking down the slope of the crater. The door to the tower was left open. Fry emerged from the door, dragging a body along with him. We cautiously walked up to Fry. The Imperial sniper Fry dragged was covered in the fluorescent blue goo from the droid’s can. The sniper gasped for air, his face blue. “He’s asphyxiating!” I cried out. “What is that stuff?”

Salak leaned down and looked at the stuff on the sniper. “It’s just some kind of mechanical lubricant,” he said.

“So why is he suffocating?” Hubri asked.

Salak shrugged. “Must be allergic.”

I pulled out my blaster, ready to put the man out of his misery when an explosion rocked the ground. I watched as the doors to the prison blow open, smoke pouring from the facility. Out of the smoke ran a young girl with long red hair following behind her. She took off like a shot, her legs impossibly fast underneath her, but before she could make it even halfway across the crater, a sniper shot caught up with her and her body crumpled to the ground. An alarm blared from the prison facility as I felt her dissipate into the Force.

Fry must’ve taken this to be a good diversion, since he ran for the second watchtower before any of us could stop him. “Fry, no!” Lyrilis yelled out behind him.

He made it only a few steps towards the tower before a sniper managed a shot on him. He fell to the ground. I covered my mouth to keep myself from yelling and getting shot with him. I knew he was probably still operational. That droid had too much dumb luck to be destroyed completely, but I still felt fear creep in. We watched as some stormtroopers walked out of the prison and collected the red-haired girl and Fry, dragging their bodies into the facility.

The shuttle on the prison rose into the sky, its wings uncurling from the top of it, and it sailed into the atmosphere. The alarm ceased its screeching.

Salak let out a curse. “The defector could’ve been on that transport,” he said. “We probably just failed this mission.”

I let out a sigh. The mission was taking bad turn after bad turn. “What now?” I asked. “Any ideas?”

Salak unslung the bag from his back and rummaged through it. “Yeah, one.” He sounded frustrated. He produced a thermal detonator and handed it to Gordon. “You guys stay here. I’m going to go up this tower,” he pointed to the tower rising over us, “and use the sniper rifle to take out the other towers. Use this detonator only if you have to. Understood?”

Gordon nodded. “Yes, use this.”

Salak sighed. “No, you big idiot. Actually, give that back.” He reached for detonator but Gordon pulled it out of his reach. “Gordon, give it back! I have a new plan!”

“I want to keep it,” Gordon grumbled, lightly pushing Salak back.

Salak reached again. “In my new plan, you get to use your axe!”

Their shuffling stopped. Gordon thought for a moment. “Fair enough,” he decided, handing the detonator back to Salak.

Salak handed the bomb to Hubri. “Same plan, but this time, you hold the detonator.”

“What an honor,” Hubri said, mocking enthusiasm.

Salak nodded. “Okay, this should work.” He disappeared into the tower’s doorway and up the staircase to the top, where the sniper rifle laid ready for him.

We waited at the base of the tower, anxious for Salak’s plan to work. I felt Lyrilis tense up next to me. “You alright?” I asked. No response. After several moments, she looked around the corner of the watchtower and began walking towards the prison. “What the hell are you doing?” I called after her.

She turned around and looked at me. “Fulfilling my destiny… I think.”

“Destiny?” I asked. She didn’t respond. She turned back towards the prison and continued forward.

I couldn’t figure out exactly what compelled me, but I ran after her. Maybe it was my own wild destiny or, more likely, I just didn’t want to see another one of us end up like Fry, and especially not Lyrilis.

I caught up to her and waited for the sniper shots to come towards us. I anticipated the searing pain that would inevitably end my life. I trembled slightly as I watched the first bolt fly towards us.

Miraluka, traditionally, did not believe death to be feared. It was another part of the cycle of the Force. I wasn’t the most traditional in my beliefs, but I never thought I feared death. Whenever it happened, I would return to the Force and be with my parents and I would no longer need to worry about the things that weighed on me from day to day.

That, however, turned out to be a lie. I was terrified. Everyone who claimed to not fear death must’ve been lying. At that moment, watching an arc of red streaking towards us, I felt everything come into perspective.

I took a breath and waited for the bolt to hit. I kept walking, keeping close behind Lyrilis, but I waited for the pain.

It didn’t come, nor did I hear it land next to us. I looked up and watched another bolt come towards us. It raced towards us. It should’ve hit us directly, but I watched as it dissolved harmlessly in the air above us.

“Stay close to me,” Lyrilis said.

I put a trembling hand on her shoulder as we walked. “A-are you doing this?” I asked.

She gave a small chuckle. “No.”

I looked at her, confused. We kept walking towards the prison, more bolts coming towards us. All of them dissolved around us, like an energy shield surrounded us. I was almost mesmerized by the effect. The firing let up. Salak must’ve taken out one of the towers.

We made it to where the doors once held the prison facility close. Smoke still poured from the electronics in the door as we entered. I took my hand from Lyrilis’s shoulder, still shaking slightly. “We should thank that girl,” Lyrilis said, looking at the door. “Her sacrifice is helping us immensely.”

I looked around. “Hubri and Gordon…?”

“Didn’t follow us,” Lyrilis shrugged. I let out a sigh, trying to calm myself. Lyrilis looked at me, a sympathetic look on her face. She took my hand from my side and clasped it in hers. Her hand was softer than I expected given her rough appearance. “Meena, stay calm, okay?” she said, a gentle smile across her lips.

Her attempt did not make me calmer. I felt my heart skip a beat as she looked at me. Maybe it was the adrenaline, but she looked beautiful with her messy hair and crooked smile. I tried to banish the thought. It wasn’t the time for any of that. I wasn’t trying to fall for the first pretty Miraluka girl I met. I needed… stability before anything like that, I thought.

I wasn’t even going to consider her Jedi hangups.

I quickly took my hand from her and looked around. We stood in what was a reception area before it got blown up, with a front desk and several benches arranged in a waiting area. The lights were off, likely broken by the explosion. Several of the benches were burned slightly and blown out of their neat rows by the blast. There were two doors, one on either side of the side. “Well, right or left?” I asked, clearing my throat.

Lyrilis looked around the room. “Hmm…” she thought a moment. To my surprise and completely unlike me, she seemed unaffected by the past few minutes of events. “Left.”

We walked over to the door on the left and I took a deep breath before I pressed the panel to open it. The door slid open and in the room was Fry, hooked up a machine, and a human man dressed in a black coat with a burn scar under his right eye. The left arm of his coat was limp, as if there was nothing inside it. I didn’t like the look of that man, but I was relieved to see Fry. He was operational and working and staring at us.

“Get me out of this!” Fry yelled.


	10. Jailbreak

The man lifted his intact arm, his hand gripping a pistol, pointed at us. “What are you two doing here?” he yelled. His coat matched that of an Imperial officer, but it was worn so sloppily I couldn’t tell if he was one.

Lyrilis held the lightsaber in front of her, unignited. “We’re saving our friend,” she said, confidence in her voice.

“So this is your droid that attempted to infiltrate this facility?” he asked, gesturing his pistol towards Fry. He struggled against the metal restraints that held him to the table under him.

“I have no master!” Fry called out.

“Err, no, not exactly,” Lyrilis’s voice faltered as she turned the pike over in her hands. “He’s a friend.”

“An acquaintance, more like,” I offered.

“You don’t make friends with machines,” the man grumbled. Fry tried to yank the restraints from the table, barely pulling the metal out of shape. “Stop that!” the man yelled, slapping Fry across the cranium with the pistol. The limp sleeve of his shirt flung loosely with the action. Fry’s lights flickered out.

I pulled my own pistol from the holster on my leg and the white blade of Lyrilis’s pike burst to life. “Leave him alone,” she growled.

The man held his hands up, the blaster hanging limply in his hand. “Fine, he’s your problem now, Jedi,” he stammered out. He backed up to the wall behind him and quickly hit a button. A hidden door opened up and he slipped into the dark of it.

Lyrilis and I took off after him, entering the same darkness he had. We were punched with a gag as the smell of rotting death overtook our senses in the new room. “That’s horrid,” I choked, trying to cover my nose.

Lyrilis held her pike up to cast a light over the room. Three cells made of glowing yellow energy sat against the back wall. In the leftmost was the corpse of a long-dead Wookie--the source of the stench. The middle one was partially deactivated with circuitry and wires pulled out from the energy source at the top.

“You!” a voice called from the rightmost cell. A gaunt-looking man sat in the final cell. “You’re a Jedi!”

Lyrilis’s eyebrow perched upwards under her eye covering. “Yeah, kind of. You must the defector we’re here to rescue.”

The man stood up and nodded his head. “Yes, sorry. I am Admiral Voss,” he explained. “Well, not ‘admiral’ anymore, am I?” he laughed with a nervousness.

“Stand back,” she warned him before slicing through the power source. The yellow energy flickered away. Voss cautiously stuck his hand through where the energy had once been, as if he still expected it to shock him.

“We have our mission,” I said. “We should hurry.”

Lyrilis gave a nod. “I agree.” She turned to the former Imperial. “Voss, follow us, we’ll get you off-planet.”

With haste, she grabbed me by the wrist and began dragging me out of the cloud of death and back to Fry. I was taken aback by her sudden touchiness. Prior to landing on Felucia, she was aloof, almost standoffish. But now she was, perhaps not carefree, but lighter in her disposition. I wasn’t going to protest this; her smile was far nicer than her scowl, and I never liked the brooding type.

Fry was missing from his table, the restraints pulled apart and machinery broken by a clumsy hand. I sensed movement in the reception area ahead. “Seems the others followed us,” Lyrilis commented. She released her grip on my wrist and we lead Voss through the empty room and out to our friends.

Hubri and Gordon stood towards the wall opposite us, Fry unconscious and strapped to Gordon’s back. Salak peered out the blown-open door, watching. Hubri approached us, wading through the sea of turned-over furniture. “This our guy?” she asked, pointing a clawed finger at the defector.

“Sure is,” Lyrilis nodded.

“Voss,” he said, holding out a hand.

“Targets inbound,” Salak called out. “They’ll pin us down here.”

Hubri ignored Voss’s outstretched hand. “So we’re screwed?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Lyrilis said. She paged Chak on her comlink. “Chak, we’ve got a situation,” she called.

“Lucky you,” Chak replied, “ship is all fixed up. What’s your situation?”

Salak took over on his com. “We acquired the defector, but we’re about to be trapped in this prison facility. Too many troops converging on this point to make a clean escape.”

“Find me a place to land and I can get you out,” Chak said. “Otherwise, find another way out.”

An artificially amplified voice with an Imperial accent poured in from outside the facility. I sensed a large gathering of people outside. “Come out with your hands up and you will be unharmed. Resistance will not be tolerated.”

Lyrilis gave a smirk. “Shall we resist?”

 

We flew up a flight of stairs hidden behind the door on our right. We needed to reach the landing pad, we figured. Chak’s ship wouldn’t fit on it, but it was better than nothing.

The stairs landed on a long hallway, dark with the power out and eerily void of people. We took off down the hall in front of us, passing control rooms and various closets. I sensed Gordon stop behind us. “Come on, keep up,” I urged.

He stared at the door next to him. “This says its a weapons storage room,” he said.

“What about it?” Hubri asked.

“We should bring some weapons back to the senator. Maybe it’ll help.” Gordon reached out to the panel next to the door.

“That’s not the priority!” Hubri argued. “Priority right now is getting out of this hellish jungle with our lives.”

Gordon touched the panel. The system turned red. A siren blared overhead, deafening and disorienting. “Dammit, Gordon!” Salak yelled out. “Come on!”

Gordon’s face contorted into a shameful panic and he began running after us. “We know you’re in there,” the accent spoke again over his loudspeaker. “You just tripped an alarm. If you do not leave, we will level the building. We have TIE bombers incoming.”

“They will do it. They will not hesitate,” Voss commented as we ran, his voice yelling over the siren.

“None of us are doubting that!” I snipped back. Ahead of me, Salak threw open a door and the light of the outside poured into the hallway. We ran into the blinding light and onto the landing pad.

“Chak, we’re on the landing pad on the roof of the facility!” Lyrilis yelled in her comlink.

“I’m going as fast as I can!” Chak’s voice yelled back.

I looked over the edge of the landing pad, careful not to come too close to the edge. There must’ve been a whole battalion of stormtroopers below us. Two AT-ST walkers flanked the stormtroopers. An officer stood at the helm of it all, a loudspeaker in hand. “We gave you a chance,” he said. “We will be coming in now.” Stormtroopers began marching into the building. The whirring sound of TIE engines became audible overhead.

“I told you, they will bomb this facility without even thinking,” Voss urged again. “Those troopers are nothing to them.”

I wanted him to shut up. The sound of the TIEs grew closer. I watched them crest the tops of the trees at the edge of the crater, fear once again burrowing in the pit of my stomach. The TIEs overshot the facility and turned back around, likely preparing for a bombing run.

With triumph, the  _ Stalwart _ jumped over the line of trees, the engines of it blowing them over. AT-STs fired on the ship, their bolts absorbing into deflector shields. The ship approached our location with its boarding ramp already lowered.

“Hurry on!” Chak yelled into our comms.

We had no protest to this demand as we raced up the ramp and into the  _ Stalwart _ . As soon as the ramp lifted us into the ship, we were knocked off balance by a sharp turn. I heard an explosion and the ship rocked beneath us. We all grabbed onto whatever we could, stuck in our place by the boarding ramp unless we felt like crawling through the freighter.

Voss, struggling against Chak’s rough flying, looked full of himself. “Told you they would bomb it.”

There was a final jolt forward before the ship became still. I recognized the familiar sensation of hyperspace. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. On shaky feet, we all managed into the common area outside Chak’s cockpit.

“That was quite the getaway,” Hubri commented to Chak. Her tone wasn’t as poisonous as it normally was, but I doubt she meant it as a compliment.

Chak grunted in annoyance. “You’re alive. That’s what matters.”

“Back to Alderaan?” I asked.

Chak shook his head. “We’re to rendezvous with a frigate in the Outer Rim. Can’t disclose which system, but the ship is known as the  _ Resurgence _ . It’s owned by Senator Organa and operated by the Alderaanian military, but you all know nothing about that, understood?” He looked over us as he waited for us to get his meaning. “It’s a safe place for people like us. We can take the defector there. He’ll be safe aboard the  _ Resurgence _ .”

“Will Senator Organa be there?” Lyrilis asked.

“No,” Chak said. “He wants as few connections to our rebellion as possible right now. He believes he’s most valuable in the Senate right now. Can’t be a senator in handcuffs.”

“Or in a grave,” Salak added, grimly.

“Exactly,” Chak nodded. “The ship is captained by an Adrian Zaidack, but he goes by Captain Adrian. He’ll be who you report to from now on.”

There was a quiet lull in speech. Gordon set Fry down next to me. “You’re a good mechanic, right?” he asked.

“I can repair machines,” I replied. There was a careful distinction between being capable and good that I left unvoiced. “I’ll try getting him functioning again.” 

Chak pointed me to a toolkit. I sat on the floor of the  _ Stalwart _ and began a tedious operation on the droid. It was a nerve-wracking job, with his unorthodox parts and shoddy wiring. Where I once found a relaxing challenge in repairing droids, I now found tense horror.

I was halfway through my horrible repairs when Chak cleared his throat again. “Everyone,” he began, sitting down in a seat next to Salak. “It’s storytime, I guess.” I looked up from Fry’s opened chassis at him. His face was more serious than usual. His grimace was deeper. I didn’t get a good sense for this story.

“I haven’t been honest with you all,” he said. “I am… or was, a Jedi. You all saw that on Korriban.” His eyes settled on Lyrilis. “I made it to Knighthood. Fought in the Battle of Geonosis. That’s when things changed, though. The Jedi Order wasn’t the same after that battle. The Order became a military, I thought. So I left.”

His eyes shifted down to his hands. They were sad. Unbearably sad. “There was a civil war on my home planet, Virgilia 7. I returned to fight alongside my brothers. I…” his voice wavered, as if he detested the words that would come next. “I did things I’m not proud of. I killed so many people. Many of my brothers died. When the Jedi Purge happened and the Republic fell… I couldn’t handle it. I cut myself off from the Force. I can only feel it now in bursts of emotion.” My mind recoiled at the idea. The mere thought of blindness terrified me.

“I became a drifting smuggler,” Chak continued. “I got this ship and met Senator Organa. Started working for him and I’ve been doing that ever since.” He wiped his nose with the sleeve of his coat, his eyes still on his hands in front of him.

There was an uncomfortable silence among us. Nobody dared to break the fragile peace around us.

Chak stood up. “Just thought I’d share,” he sighed. “Thanks for listening.” He disappeared into the cockpit, the door closing behind him.

* * *

 

I flicked the power switch on Fry’s cranium again and breathed relief as I heard motors beginning to power up. The lights in his receptors flashed on. An audio byte began playing from him, heavily distorted. “FR-9 reporting-- _ bzzt _ \--Where am I?” Fry looked around. “Who is that?” He pointed to Voss.

“The defector we rescued,” I informed him. 

I began to close up the panel on the back of his head, but he quickly snatched the tool from my hand. “I’ll handle this from here, partner,” he said.

“You’re probably better at this anyway,” I replied, standing up. I shook out the sleepiness in my limbs and realized how sleepy the rest of me was. I sat down in an empty seat, hoping to get even just half-decent sleep before arriving at this frigate. I debated following Hubri’s lead and finding the crew’s quarters so I could at least have a bed to sleep in, but the seat was comfortable enough. Before I could attempt drifting off to sleep, I sensed Lyrilis approach.

“Hey, Meena,” she whispered.  “Come with me. I want to talk.”

Any sleepiness in me quickly melted into curious nervousness. “Uh, sure,” I replied, eloquently.

She smiled and took my wrist before I could even stand up from my seat. She led me down a hall and into some private room on the ship, closing the door behind us. My stomach knotted as the door clicked closed on the small room. My mind ran circles around itself trying to navigate where Lyrilis was going with this. It could’ve been about what Chak told us, or about Felucia, or she could’ve been--

“Do you remember this?” she asked, pulling the crystal from her pocket.

I looked down at it. I’m sure I looked as dumbfounded as I felt. “Yeah, it’s that rock you want to protect,” I said.

She shook her head. “It’s not just a rock. It’s a Shard.”

“A… A what?”

“A Shard,” Lyrilis repeated. “This crystal is a person. A Jedi Master, in fact.”

I almost laughed at the absurdity. “I…” I thought about my words. “How does it… hold a lightsaber?”

Lyrilis let out a small giggle and I felt my heart jump, both from the embarrassment of my silly question and the sight of the smile across her face. “I think they use droid bodies for combat. You can speak to him.” She motioned the crystal closer to me. “Try it.”

I leaned down to the crystal in her hand. “Uhh… hello,” I said.

Lyrilis laughed again and the heat of embarrassment warmed my face again. “Speak with him through the Force.”

“Oh, of course,” I said, standing up straight again and rubbing the back of my neck. I took a breath through my nose and reached out to the Shard in my mind.  _ Hello? _ , I asked.

_ Oh, hello. _ I was a little shocked when I heard a soft-spoken, masculine voice reply.  _ What’s your name? _ , he asked.

_ I’m Meena Aryss. _

_ Oh, are you? _ His tone was cheerful but I felt a prickle of discomfort at his wording.  _ My name is Sil. I’m a Jedi Master. _

_ Nice to meet you, Sil, _ I thought to him.  _ Where did Lyrilis find you? _

_ I was the property of a gangster named Ganga’Lor, it seems. _ , he explained.  _ I’ve been asleep for hundreds of years, so I have no memory of this. _

I was curious about the creature--if I could call him that--but I struggled to articulate the questions I had.  _ Hundreds of years? How old are you? _

_ 4,000 years old, give or take. It’s hard to keep track. _

I was taken aback. He was old enough to have seen ancient wars between the Sith and the Jedi and Mandalorians. And he was a rock.  _ That’s… interesting, _ I managed.

_ I’m far from the oldest of my kind, _ Sil explained.  _ Silicon structures like I have are far sturdier than the flesh you and Lyrilis have _ .  _ I’ve been alive for a long time, and I’ll be alive for far longer. _

I thought for a moment.  _ If you’ve been asleep for hundreds of years… _

_ Yes, I was asleep for the Jedi Purge _ , he confirmed, answering my question before I could ask it.  _ When Lyrilis woke me, it was… distressing. So many voices I once knew had been silenced. A horrible thing. _

I took a breath.  _ Yes, it was _ .

I felt the ship pull gently from hyperspace, breaking my concentration on Sil. “We’re here,” Lyrilis whispered. She seemed to say something to Sil before gently placing him back in the pocket of her oversized jacket. “Let’s head back,” she said, smiling.

* * *

 

The  _ Stalwart _ landed in the hangar of a large  _ Nebulon B _ frigate. We disembarked, walking down into the white hangar, surrounded by various transports in all kinds of models and the bustle of pilots and mechanics. I stared at the variety of light freighters, repurposed Imperial shuttles, and stolen Clone Wars starfighters. A quiet excitement surfaced within me at the concept of flying any of them.

The air aboard the frigate was crisp and cool, smelling of the metals the artificial atmosphere was stored in. The smell of space stations. I pulled the sleeves of my jacket down over my arms to keep myself warm against the chill of the ship.

A man in the neatly-pressed blue uniform of the Alderaanian military marched up to greet us. He had dark hair and a thick dark mustache that sprawled across his pale face. He stood in front of us, his stance soldierly and straight. “Hello, you all must be Organa’s latest recruits,” he started.

Lyrilis nodded. “Presumably, we are.”

“Excellent,” he said. His voice was authoritative by nature, but he sounded relaxed in his speech. “My name is Captain Adrian. I was told to expect you all. You came from Felucia, yes?” We all gave a nod. “And which one of you is the defector?”

Behind us, Voss saluted the captain. “Me, sir.” He dropped the salute. “Ex-Admiral Voss of the Imperial Navy.”

“Well Voss,” Captain Adrian said, “in exchange for your full cooperation and advising on Imperial matters, we can offer you protection. This is what we offered you when we agreed to your rescue. Do we still have a deal?”

“You have a deal, Captain,” Voss agreed.

“Excellent. We will get you to the medical bay for examination. The rest of you should head to your quarters aboard the ship and rest,” Captain Adrian instructed. “We have another mission for you all. Take a day to recuperate, but this time tomorrow there will be a briefing held in the meeting room on this deck. We’ll get introduced then. Any questions?”

“Where can we find our quarters?” Salak asked.

“Chak’ard can show you to the crews’ quarters.” The captain paused a moment. “If that will be all, you’re all dismissed.”

Chak, having been volunteered for the job, directed us to our quarters. We wound through the long white hallways, sterile enough to be used for its intended purpose as a medical frigate. I couldn’t shake a sense of familiarity as we walked through the ship. We took an elevator down a few decks before Chak dropped us off at a series of doors.

“You all are being given private quarters,” Chak explained. “Feel lucky. The captain said to notify someone if something needs to be adjusted.”

Gordon peered into one of the rooms. “I don’t think this bed will fit me,” he frowned.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure something can be worked out,” Lyrilis offered.

Salak nodded, “Yeah, Chak said we can get things adjusted.”

I pressed the panel to open the door to open and tried to suppress my excitement at the sight of what sat on the other side. The room, while still small, was at least twice the size of the tiny room I lived in on Nar Shaddaa.

I walked inside and closed the door behind me. There was a bed with sheets, a footlocker,  and a small table and a chair, all white to match the walls. I sat down on the bed. It was soft and comfortable. I peeked in the footlocker--empty, as I expected--and placed the few items I carried on me in it. I took the blaster from my holster and placed it under the pillow of the bed before climbing in myself. I didn’t think it was necessary. It was more of a compulsion than anything.

The quiet hum of the ship and the warmth of the blankets lulled me to a peaceful, dreamless sleep.


	11. Commando Squad Seven

“You will be sent to Fresia to retrieve some technology for us,” Captain Adrian explained. We sat in a small ready room around a round table. A small holo projection rose from the center of the table, displaying a planet I didn’t recognize labeled, unsurprisingly, Fresia.

“What kind of technology?” Salak asked.

“Cutting edge starfighters,” the captain replied. The projection shifted to a long-nosed starfighter with twin S-foils on each side of it. “We’ve been calling them X-Wings. Developed by Incom Corporation for our cause, but abandoned on Fresia once the Empire starting snooping too much.”

Lyrilis cleared her throat. “So we’re supposed to retrieve them, but then how do we get them back to the frigate?” She rubbed her hands with some anxiety, looking at the projection instead of the captain.

“You will be sent with enough pilots to fly them back,” the captain explained.

Lyrilis’s expression turned to relief. “Good,” she exhaled.

“We don’t have all the intel yet,” the captain continued, “and the team you’ll be carrying this out with isn’t ready either.”

“Team?” I asked. “Other than the pilots?”

Captain Adrian nodded. “Yes, you’ll have assistance. Commando Squad Seven will be on the ground with you. They’re some of our finest. This is a big mission for our small movement. This has required a lot of coordination. We’re taking a chance on you all. That’s why we ask for your patience for another couple of days.”

 

The meeting continued with offers of training--as much as they could spare, at least. Shooting ranges, leadership training, physical training, flight simulators. If it weren’t for the endless waiting list to get into the sims, I would’ve been there every day. I knew I could go for the physical training--living in hyperspace for the better part of a couple of years doesn’t lend the healthiest lifestyle--but I only turned up to the shooting range. 

Salak took bigger advantage of the offer, it seemed. He began missing meals with us, taking them when he was done with whatever training he did that day. Whenever he did meet with us, he would go on about what he’d learned and encourage us to join him. We always turned him down for the same reason--exhaustion. Not even Gordon could keep up with him.

“He’s always been motivated like this,” Gordon said finally, after Lyrilis asked him over a cafeteria breakfast of oatmeal and dried fruits. “He’s a survivor, he told me. Made it through an uprising in the Chiss Ascendancy. Now, he’s always trying to find new skills to get himself through.”

I nodded quietly. “I wish I had that drive,” I replied. I was a survivor. I looked to Lyrilis across the table from me. She was, too. Hubri, too, maybe. Likely everyone on that frigate was a survivor of something or another. Why else would we be risking our lives if we hadn’t already been so close to losing it?

* * *

 

The week passed and our bodies healed. We began to get settled on the frigate. After a few days, the ship began a jump to the Fresia system, setting us all on edge as we waited for word from the captain.

By the end of the week, we received exactly that: a request to meet with Captain Adrian in the hangar bay. We gathered to meet him in the busy bay, filled with pilots in flightsuits--some the blue of the Alderaanian military, others black or olive or cream or whatever else the rebel cell could scrape up. Mechanics carried tools and worked on the patchwork starfighters and freighters that took up only half the hanger space.

Hubri, Lyrilis, and I spotted Gordon wading through the crowd around him. “Salak isn’t here?” he asked as he stumped towards us.

“Thought he’d be with you,” Hubri replied.

Captain Adrian cleared his throat. “Salak will not be joining you for this mission,” he explained. “He has been recognized for his skill and we assigned him another equally vital, yet more difficult mission with another strike team.”

“Oh,” Gordon’s voice dropped. “He never told me.”

Lyrilis put a hand on his huge shoulder. “I’m sure he meant to,” she comforted him.

“Time for you to meet your team,” the captain said curtly. He waved for us to follow him and led us over to a small transport in the hangar. In front of it stood three men clad in green ponchos. “This is Commando Squad Seven,” the captain introduced, “but they call themselves Lucky Squadron.” He turned to the commandos. “Where are the pilots?”

The commandos stood at attention to the captain. My mind was caught by the smallest of them: a blue-skinned Twi’lek who couldn’t have been more than a kid, maybe 15 years old. His poncho was far too big on him, and his face was pudgy with adolescence. 

“They’re already loaded up inside, sir,” the taller of two humans said. He had crow-black hair and a hooked nose on which a pair of spectacles sat. He looked too bookish for soldiering but at least he wasn’t a child.

The shorter of the two humans nodded enthusiastically. “Already packed in, sir,” he grunted out, saluting. He was much wider than the bookish man in almost every feature, though his stature was lower. His head was bald but his jaw featured rough, unkempt stubble.

“Excellent,” the captain replied before turning back to us. “We’ve received word of six prototype starfighters down there, so we’re sending you with six pilots. We’ve also gotten word a small Imperial presence on the planet, so be careful. We’ll pull out of hyperspace within the hour. Once we’re out, get planetside and get those ships. Any questions?” We all stayed silent. “Then it’s up to you. Good luck.”

The captain left, leaving us with Commando Squad Seven.

The shorter man put his hand out to me quite eagerly. “How do you all do?” he asked. I held my hand out to shake his and he gripped it tightly and shaking with some force. “Name’s Mitch,” he grunted. He let go of my hand as quickly as he grabbed it and moved onto Hubri, and then to Lyrilis after Hubri refused.

The taller man gave a short nod. “My name’s Avache,” he said, “and this is Jameson.” He gestured to the Twi’lek boy next to him.

“Hi!” the kid waved, his hand barely escaping the length of the poncho.

Gordon leaned down to Mitch’s poncho. “Where’d you get this?” he asked. “It’s nice.”

“Provisions made for us. Camouflage of sorts,” Mitch replied. “There’s more on the transport, but I don’t think they make them big enough for you.” Gordon frowned.

Lyrilis looked to Jameson with an inquisitive look. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen, I think,” Jameson replied.

I knit my eyebrows in confusion. “You think?”

He shrugged, his tone casual. “I don’t know when my birthday is.”

Lyrilis gave a small smile. “I don’t know mine either,” she replied.

I hid my surprise at their admissions. “I know mine,” Hubri grunted as she walked abroad the transport, her arms crossed.

“She seems uptight,” Mitch grunted.

“She’s been a good ally,” Lyrilis defended her. “Strong and determined, at least.”

Gordon nodded. “We shouldn’t talk behind her back, but I think she’s hiding something.”

A buzz came over the ship’s intercom indicating that we would be pulling out of hyperspace. “Let’s get prepared for departure,” Avache suggested.

 

From above, the planet was a sphere of blue with continents of green. Patches of grey clouds hung over sections of the planet. We descended into one of the patches of grey, fogging the viewport I peered out, looking beyond the person next to me. I sat sandwiched between two pilots. They were both young, maybe my age, and looked a little uneasy.

From the planet’s surface, it was beautiful. We landed on a large island, maybe a hundred meters across. It was densely forested with conifers taller than I could make out with the light fog that blanketed the tops of the trees, like the haze that blocked the tops of the buildings on Nar Shaddaa, but fresh. It was temperate and mild, if a little muggy.

“Alright recruits,” Mitch announced, “this way.” He placed a brown helmet on his head before handing one to Jameson who eagerly put the helmet on. 

Avache checked his wayfinding equipment. “It’s this way, Mitch,” he corrected, pointing in the opposite direction.

“Bah,” Mitch grunted. “Just put on your helmet.” He handed one to Avache. 

Avache passed the helmet to one of the pilots. “Let’s move out,” he called.

We began trekking through the forest along no particular path. There wasn’t one to follow. People hadn’t yet made a mark on this particular forest. I reached out as we walked, sensing for danger. Instead, I was greeted with clean nature, like Felucia, but not as overwhelming in quantity. Rodents skittered under the low-growth and fish swam in nearby water. I sensed no settlements, no sentients, no structures. We were alone in the forest.

I let out a breath of relief.

I walked alongside the pilots, listening to their conversations. They were nervous about these new starfighters more than the Empire. Questions about the engines working and movement systems staying on course. I knew I would have the same concerns if I had to fly an abandoned prototype ship. One boasted over his abilities to fly anything. Two of the other pilots smacked him in the back of his head.

“Get down!” Mitch called out, startling everyone.

We all got low, Jameson throwing himself to the ground with a hard  _ thud _ . I sensed ahead of us for the danger, finding nothing. For a moment I doubted my senses before a rodent scampered out into the clearing in front of us. Mitch pulled the blaster rifle from his back and shot at the creature, missing it with a large margin. The rodent skittered back into the bushes.

“All clear,” Mitch sighed.

“What the hell was that for?” Hubri growled, dusting herself off.

Mitch peeled himself from the ground. “Never too early to start thinking about dinner.”

“Were we not sent with rations?” Gordon asked, looking to Avache who carried one of the two large supplies packs.

“We were,” he said, “but Mitch prefers things the hard way.”

Mitch clapped Jameson on the back. “Fresh hunt is good for a growing boy,” he declared.

“I’ll eat anything, Mitch, I don’t mind,” Jameson assured him.

 

We marched for several more hours before the sky began to get dark and the air grew cold. Avache insisted we stop for the night. “Walking blind through a forest is never a good idea,” he said.

We set up camp. We got a fire going and all sat around it, passing around ration packs and water canteens. The sky cleared above us, revealing the cosmos through the trees and I took in the sight. Coruscant always had too many lights to see the stars at night, and the pollution on Nar Shaddaa was its own obstacle. I watched the stars above us, twinkling. They never did that in space. There was no atmosphere to distort the light out there. Everything was clear up there. Certain and steady and bound by unchanging laws.

I had the itch to fly again.

Lyrilis’s voice brought my mind back down to the planet. “A book?” she asked. I looked to Avache, sitting a little behind us and reading from an old bound-paper book. The cover was plain, with only the words “Jedi Tales” pressed into the thick cover in a dated font.

Avache looked up from his book and nodded. “Carrying a book on the Jedi is safer than carrying a datapad.” He gestured the book towards the fire. “I can get rid of it easier.”

Lyrilis considered it for a moment. “That’s fair. What’s in it?”

Avache turned a page. “Right now I’m reading the story of a Jedi named Revan,” he said.

Lyrilis cocked her head. “Who was he?”

“He started a Jedi,” Avache explained, “but he was seduced to the dark side during the Mandalorian Wars. He was brought back to the light by a woman named Bastila Shan, but he could never be the Jedi he originally was. The Jedi Council did all they could keep him in the light, but he’d learned too much. He fell in love with Shan and married and soon after, he disappeared. It is believed that he tried again to bring down the Sith Emperor, but he likely did not succeed.”

“I see why I was never told about him,” Lyrilis whispered to herself.

Avache flipped the page again. “Ah, this book has the story of Revan’s apprentice. She was exiled by the Jedi Council for her actions in the Mandalorian Wars. She cut herself off from the Force in atonement.”

_ Like Chak _ , I thought. “Cut herself off from the Force?” I asked, the words mostly for myself. I contemplated blindness again and shuttered.

“Meena, is it?” Avache asked. I nodded. “You’re interested in this, too?”

“I lived on Coruscant,” I explained, debating how much to omit. “I saw Jedi around as a kid and… I was always interested in them.”

“You grew up on Coruscant?” Lyrilis asked, not looking at me. I couldn’t tell if it was Miraluka habit or if she was avoiding looking at me. “Explains the accent,” she mused. “I grew up there too, before the Jedi found me.” I stared at her, maybe a little too obviously. The purple in her hair looked wild bathed in the orange light and her pale skin looked as warm as the fire. “Where are you from, Avache?” she asked, breaking the silence between us.

“Dantooine,” he said. “My wife and daughters are waiting for me back there.”

“How old are your daughters?” I asked.

Avache looked up from his book. “The oldest is two. The other was just born.”

Lyrilis’s lips formed a smile. “Congrats,” she said.

“Thank you,” Avache whispered.

I stared into the fire, thinking about two little girls with black hair and hawkish noses, reading paper books like their father.  _ He should be home _ , I thought.  _ They should know their father _ .


	12. Wyvern Squadron

We stood at a grey shoreline, staring across at an island sitting in the sea about a hundred meters away. Like the one we stood on, tall pines rose from it, piercing into the sky, the tops obscured by low-hanging grey clouds that kept in a slight chill. I didn’t care to think about how we’d cross the water, or how cold it would likely be.

“The water seems shallow enough to walk across,” Avache said, looking over some geographical information on his datapad. “Our starfighters should be there, on a platform about,” he scanned the horizon, “there.” He pointed at the island, a little to our right and sure enough, through the black-green trees, a manmade structure was barely visible.

“I sense people,” Lyrilis said. “On that island.”

“Can you tell if they’re Imperial?” Jameson asked, his eyes wide.

Lyrilis shook her head. “Doesn’t quite work like that.” Her tone was notably patient.

“If we’re gonna ambush those Imps, we need camouflage,” Mitch announced.

Hubri raised a suspicious eyebrow. “What are those ponchos then?”

“We need more.” Mitch reached down to the moistened loam beneath us and smeared the mud on his face. “Come on, Jameson, get some camouflage!” He grabbed another handful and plopped it into Jameson’s hand.

“Yes, sir!” Jameson barked. He smacked the mud onto his blue cheek.

“You all, I know you all are new around here, but get some mud on ya,” Mitch ordered at us. 

Gordon quickly took to spreading the mud on his skin and Fry needed no urging to do something stupid, but Hubri, Lyrilis, and I held firm against the mud. “I think we’re fine without camouflage,” I said.

“Yeah, I’ll pass,” Lyrilis agreed.

Hubri remained silent, which said enough.

I turned towards Hubri and Lyrilis and opened my mouth to speak when a handful of mud smacked against my face with a wet  _ slap _ . The mud spread across the side of my face, some of it splattering into my mouth. I coughed and spit, shocked by the coldness of the mud. I wiped the stuff off as quickly as I could react. “What the hell?” I yelled, turning to Mitch.

“Y’know, some girls put mud on their faces to make their skin smooth,” he taunted. Mitch chucked another ball of mud at Lyrilis, landing directly in her face. She wiped the mud off before lobbing it back at Mitch. Mitch dodged Lyrilis’s mudball and readied a third one, chucking it at Hubri, landing at her chin and neck.

Hubri cried out in anger. “Throw another one, I dare you!” she yelled. She hurried off towards the water, not giving Mitch a chance to take her up on her dare. She scooped up handfuls of water and rubbed the mud from her neck. I followed her, untying my eye covering and dipping it in the cold water. “Idiots,” Hubri hissed.

Lyrilis came up behind us and took a handful of seawater to her face, melting off the mud. “We need to figure out our plan of attack, not get into mud fights.”

I rinsed my mouth out with the salty water, spitting the remaining mud back into the ocean where it belonged. I cleaned off my face and hair, the saltwater leaving behind a sticky feeling as it evaporated from my skin and salt stayed in my hair. “We can’t charge straight on if there might be people watching,” I said.

Lyrilis nodded and pointed to a pair of smaller patches of land jutting from the water to our left. “There’s gotta be a sandbar connecting this island to those and then to our objective. We should follow that and come up from behind.”

“Why not just straight on?” Hubri asked. Her tattoos were visible again from under the mud. “We’ve got plenty of manpower between the seven of us, plus those pilots.”

“Sure,” I replied, wringing out my eye covering before tying it back over my face, “but wouldn’t you rather have another foot up on them?”

“Surprise is always better if it’s an option,” Lyrilis agreed.

Gordon wandered up to us, thoroughly covered in mud. “Talking strategy?” he asked.

Lyrilis nodded. “We think it’s best to take those islands over to the objective. Keep ourselves hidden as long as we can.”

“We might make more noise,” Gordon pointed out, “and it’ll take us longer.”

Mitch and Jameson approached, dirtier than Gordon. Avache was spotless, and the pilots were more or less in similar shape. “I would prefer the safer approach,” Avache said.

“For once, I agree with Avache,” Mitch nodded. “Our intel suggests that the Imperials might’ve set up something of a more permanent camp around the ships. Bunker, communication array, the sort.”

Hubri’s eyes narrowed. “And when were you planning on telling us that?”

“Hadn’t come up yet.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Communication array? Beaming to what?”

Avache’s eyes scanned the horizon, towards the island. “We don’t know. A capital ship, likely.”

Mitch rummaged through his soiled bag and pulled out two detonator charges. “We’ve got these to deal with that array.”

“So if we sneak from behind, plant the charges and blow their communications, they’ll be surprised and without backup,” Lyrilis said.

“Sounds good to me,” Gordon agreed. “How many stormtroopers can you guys sense?”

I reached into the Force, probing the island across the way. “I sense… two,” I reported.

“At least two,” Lyrilis corrected.

I felt movement in the atmosphere, my senses still piqued. I looked up and saw the bird-like structure of a crisp white Imperial shuttle. I watched it land on the platform, or at least its approximate location amongst the trees.

Avache cursed. “Dammit. The plan just got a little more complicated.”

“No matter,” Mitch dismissed. “Let’s march towards those Imperial bastards.”

With that, we waded into the freezing water towards the western island. The water filled my boots and soaked the legs of my pants, the fabric clinging to my legs and stinging my limbs. I waited to grow used to the temperature, but my best comfort was simple numbness.

We sloshed through the shallow ocean to the island, the water never rising above my knees. We crossed over the small patch of land before continuing into the water, walking to the backside of the island. I kept my senses focused on the stormtroopers across the way, on edge with the white tips of the Imperial shuttle’s wings barely visible through the trees.

We made it to the beach, my legs tired from the weight of the water and stinging from the cold. We hurried for the cover of the treeline, hustling across the muddy sand and chunks of driftwood that littered the beach. A sharp yelp came out from behind me, followed by a sharper curse. I turned to the noise. Lyrilis knelt down on the beach, her pants ripped at the knee and the wound turning dark red. Gordon, hurrying up behind her, reached down to help her up. She wrestled her arm from his grip.

“I just tripped,” she grumbled. “You all, go. Hurry up. I can take care of myself.”

I sensed movement in the forest. The stormtroopers must’ve heard her and were on their way to investigate. I knelt down next to her, trying to help her up.“Lyrilis, the stormtroopers--”

“I know, so go,” she urged, shooing me away.

Avache cleared his throat. “Come on,” he said. “She can handle herself.”

I paused a moment before nodding in hesitant agreement. We fled into the trees, leaving Lyrilis behind. We hurried into the cover of the trees, stopping once we were sure we were hidden.

We could see the landing platform through the undergrowth. The six starfighters sat on the structure in two neat rows, flanking the white shuttle that landed earlier. Troopers in all-black armor, different and more angular than normal trooper armor, patrolled the platform.

The pilots whispered amongst themselves, pointing at the starfighters and the troopers with equal amounts of excitement and fear.

“Never seen that kind before,” Fry whistled, pointing to the black-armored trooper.

Mitch gave a laugh. “Doesn’t matter, they’ll hit the ground all the same.”

I sensed movement behind us--Lyrilis. I turned around and watched her hobble into the trees. Her knee was bandaged up with a scrap of her shirt. She grimaced with each step but was managing to avoid a limp. “What’d I miss?” she asked.

“How’d you get away from the stormtroopers?” I asked.

She gave a mischievous grin. “I convinced them I wasn’t a problem.” She moved her hand in front of herself subtly.

Hubri chuckled. “Nice one, kid.”

“We’re behind their position,” Avache said, peering at the platform through a pair of binoculars. “The communication array is directly ahead of us. We blow that and then start our attack.”

Mitch pulled the detonators from his pack. “Who’ll do the honors?” he asked.

Jameson’s hand shot up. “May I do it? Please?” he begged.

Mitch laughed. “Yeah, yeah, kid, all yours.” He handed the charges to Jameson. “Be careful with them,” he warned.

“Yes, sir!” Jameson saluted.

We marched a little closer to the array, getting as close as we dared as a group. “It’s up to you, Jameson,” Avache whispered.

Jameson gave an excited salute before hurrying down the short hill to the satellite resting above an underground bunker.

“How’d you meet him?” Lyrilis whispered to Mitch.

Mitch fiddled with the detonator remote in his hands. “Long story for another time. In short, he’s legally in my care and--”

“Whoops!” Jameson hissed from the satellite. He quickly scrambled back to us. His face was plastered with panic. “I dropped the charges.”

Hubri let out a long sigh. “Did you see where they fell?”

Jameson’s voice turned more sheepish than before. “Y-yeah, in a bush.”

Lyrilis walked to the edge of the hill and was silent a moment. “I see them. I’ll get them.” She got down low to the ground and moved as quickly and as quietly as she could to the large bush. She reached for the charges and grabbed them with little effort. She planted them and hurried back up the hill. “All set,” she said, wincing as she put weight on her injured knee again.

Mitch readied the charges from the remote. “Once this blows, get ready for a fight,” he announced. We all nodded. “In three, two… one.”

The satellite exploded in a burst of fiery energy and dark smoke. A wave of heat passed over us and just over the deafening sound of the blast, stormtroopers began to mobilize. Blaster shots flew through the cloud of smoke, missing us by a decent margin.

Lyrilis ignited her lightsaber and subsequently ignited the ground under several of the stormtroopers. Jameson’s eyes went wide with wonder. “I knew it!” he declared. “It’s a lightsaber! I knew you were a Jedi!”

“Let’s talk about this later, okay?” Lyrilis brushed off, dodging a blaster bolt.

I aimed my blaster through the smoke at one of the troopers and pulled the trigger, the bolt landing in his black plastoid armor. He flinched at the shot before raising his blaster at me. Before I could react, I felt a searing pain in my leg. I cried out, distracted by the pain long enough to miss the frag grenade that was lobbed just past me. Heat passed over me and I felt a wave of energy push me forward.

For a moment, everything was a blur.

 

Ringing filled my hearing. I must’ve only been out for a few seconds, as it didn’t seem like I’d missed much. I watched through blurry vision and a headache as Lyrilis, much further down the hill, reached her hand out to one of the starfighters, moving it along the platform against its maglocks and ramming its legs into several stormtroopers. A horrid noise, muffled by my damaged ears, filled the air as errant tree branches scraped along the ship’s wings.

I got to my feet as a second frag grenade sailed over my head, much further than the last one flew. The device exploded before it hit the ground, in the middle of the pilots. I didn’t dare look behind myself after the heat passed. I could sense five of them now dead. The last standing pilot was shot down by one of the few stormtroopers.  _ That could’ve been me _ .

Two sounds happened at once: Jameson screamed out, frantic and horrified; Hubri yelled in anger and fired her crossbow at one of the remaining stormtroopers. Gordon jumped down the side of the bunker and swung his axe wide, taking out the final two.

Sick relief came over me as I couldn’t sense the stormtroopers anymore. The ringing in my ears intensified with the sudden quiet.

“The pilots,” Jameson choked out.

Avache put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and whispered. “There’s nothing we can do for them, Jameson.” Avache’s brow was knit with concern.

Jameson exhaled. “I know.”

“So what the hell do we do now?” Hubri asked, her temper flaring. She gripped the stock of her weapon tightly, as if it was the source of her tension.

Mitch stood up straight. “The captain had a plan in case of this,” he announced. “We need to get those maglocks off first.”

Lyrilis offered me assistance down the hill and I stubbornly declined. My body was in survival mode. The burn on my leg was nothing more than a sensation and my headache had subsided with the adrenaline. I knew after a few hours I would be in a lot of pain, but my body was still catching up with everything.

We came up to the bunker door, longer than it was tall and painted black. I inspected the control panel next to the door. “It’s locked,” I grumbled.

“I can get it open,” Gordon declared, winding back his fist to punch the slab of steel.

“Don’t,” I ordered, my tone a little sharper than I intended. “If you try to force entry, every alarm in that facility will go off and no doubt there’s some outpost floating over our heads somewhere that’ll hear those alarms.”

Gordon’s expression dropped into disappointment. Fry patted his back with a metal hand. “I got this, partner, don’t worry about it,” he said. Fry sidled up next to me, almost pushing me away from the panel. I feigned annoyance, knowing I could’ve disabled the alarms, but with my growing headache, I was quietly grateful for someone else to do it.

After a moment, the door opened. I held my breath, counting to three. No alarm.

“Congrats, droid,” Hubri nodded.

Avache glared at her, the finger to his mouth commanding silence. He pointed to the white shuttle still on the platform.

I sensed movement inside the bunker. I held the blaster in my hand a little tighter, waiting to move into the structure. Mitch signaled for us to move in with enthusiasm--perhaps more than was appropriate. We hurried into the bunker, our weapons ready.

The bunker was dark, lit only by some screens and a few holograms of the starships outside--the X-Wings. An Imperial stood behind a low console, his black-gloved hands above his head. His uniform was pure white, unlike other officers I’d seen around Imperial recruitment bases and on cargo inspections. “Don’t shoot!” he barked, his accent from the Core Worlds. “I am Director Krennic of the Advanced Weapons Research department. I’m just a scientist. I am no threat to you, please let me--”

A shot fired past his head, sinking into the wall behind him. The Imperial let out a whimper as the bolt missed him. Hubri’s crossbow glowed slightly from the heat of the bolt. “Shut up,” she griped.

“Wait, wait,” Lyrilis said, pushing Hubri’s crossbow down. “Undo the maglocks on the starfighters and you’re free to go.”

“You’re serious?” the man asked.

“Yes, but do it quick,” she said. “Before my friend has the chance to aim better.”

The man’s eyes went wide again and hurriedly began typing in commands to the console. “Thank you, thank you,” he whispered. I heard mechanisms power down and the holograms and screens flickered off. “Now, please let me go.”

Lyrilis gestured to an opening past her. He nodded and hurried out of the bunker, running for his shuttle. Hubri aimed her crossbow again and shot past him once again, much closer than before. “Slink of a man,” she cursed as the ramp to his shuttle raised. After a few moments, engines roared from the end of the platform and the white transport lifted upwards into the sky.

“We need to hurry and get these X-Wings out of here before he alerts someone that we’re down here,” Avache urged.

“How?” Lyrilis asked. “We lost our pilots.”

Mitch clapped her on the back. “Telling me you can’t fly, Jedi?”

“Err--”

“We need all the starfighters back,” Avache continued. “Can’t let the Empire get their hands on a single one.”

“Umm--” Lyrilis’s sounds of disapproval got louder.

“Well, grab a ship and start up her up,” Avache concluded. “Mitch, fly with them. I can take Jameson back to the transport.”

Mitch laughed. “Sounds good to me. Been itching to climb in one of these.”

“Don’t you need flight suits for starfighters?” Lyrilis protested.

Mitch began climbing the ladder to the nearest the ship. “Only if you crash. So don’t.”

With that, we all climbed into our own X-Wings. I sat down in the hard plastic and non-upholstered seat. It wasn’t comfortable but upholstery is rather low-priority for a starfighter compared to, say, safety or functionality.

Under the seat sat a crude helmet, devoid of painting or finish, but functional at the very least. I put it on, pulling down the polarizing visor despite having no need for it.

The number of buttons in such a small cockpit was overwhelming. There wasn’t an inch of unused space on the control panels in front of me. I powered up the ship feeling the familiar lift of the repulsors against the platform. I watched as the controls light up around me, readouts beginning and information streaming onto a tiny screen.

I smiled and felt my headache ease slightly.  _ Flying again, _ I thought.  _ Finally. _

“You’re free to fly, rebels,” Avache’s voice came over our comms. “May the Force be with you.”

My smile widened. I hadn’t heard those words in years.

“May the Force be with you.”

* * *

 

We entered space. I was getting the hang of the starfighter. The controls were much touchier than the heavy freighters I was used to flying. Even the slightest twitch on the control yoke sent it careening wildly in one direction or the other. It was clearly in good shape, if definitely experimental. It was unsettling flying without the rattle of loose equipment and long-faded labels near each dial and instrument. Its engines were almost too quiet for me to feel comfortable. Luckily, the horrid ringing in my ears could fill in the auditory gaps.

We traversed into the darkness of space, the life support of the starfighters holding up out of atmosphere, to my relief. “Is that you we’re seeing on our scanners?” a familiar voice asked through the comms.

“If you’re seeing six starfighters, Captain, then yes,” Mitch replied.

“We need coordinates,” Lyrilis urged, her voice tense and verging on urgent.

“Transmitting them now,” Captain Adrian answered.

A light went on next to the ship’s computer and a string of numbers ran over the screen. Coordinates, like Lyrilis asked for.

My scanners picked up something big coming out of hyperspace. I cursed. The gray mass of a Star Destroyer blipped into existence in front of us. I reached my hand to kill the engines. My finger hovered over the switch when six dots appeared on my scanners. TIEs.  _ So much for hiding _ .

“Damn it--” Captain Adrian cursed. “We’re killing comms to avoid tracing.”

“Rat snitched,” Hubri spat. “Should’ve aimed better.”

“No time for regrets,” Mitch hollered. “Only shootin’!”

I flew forward toward the TIEs, taking Mitch’s suggestion at face value despite my better judgment. I followed Hubri towards the enemy starfighters, battling sudden nausea as I watched the speedometer steadily climb.

I let loose streaks of crimson towards the TIE who got too close to me, clipping his vertical wing with the first few bolts before watching the fighter explode into a cloud of orange, my own fighter streaking through it. “One down,” I reported.

“Good work, recruit,” Mitch’s voice replied. I watched as two more dots on my scanners flickered out, their explosions playing out in front of me. I sensed Lyrilis behind me, her ship flying rather defensively. Mitch and Gordon were on my right, Fry on my left. Hubri was ahead of me, making quick work of another TIE, narrowly escaping entanglement with the enemy ship. “Enemy down,” her voice spoke over the comms. “Two more to go.”

My scanner beeped, alerting me to another incoming TIE. It moved in offensively towards me, trying to lure me into a dogfight--something I was sure I wouldn’t survive. I fired a line of shots at the TIE, missing but keeping out of his trap.

The starfighter suddenly exploded in front of me as an X-Wing jerked over the cloud of smoke and energy, flying shaky. “O-one more to go!” Lyrilis voice yelled over the comm, her voice as shaky as her starfighter.

The final dot extinguished on my scanner. “Varmints eliminated,” Fry reported.

The scanners began reading out an energy surge and I watched as the Star Destroyer warped into hyperspace in front of us. “Guess we aren’t worth the trouble anymore,” Lyrilis commented.

I read over the scans on the Star Destroyer, curious more than anything. Most of the information was blank, either nonexistent or heavily encrypted. I got down to its transponder code and designation. The  _ Crucifixion _ , it read.

“Let’s get back,” Lyrilis sighed. “Don’t want to be out here any longer than we need to.”

I downloaded the data to the ship’s computer for storage and continued flying towards the frigate, ready to be done with the mission.

* * *

 

We approached the  _ Resurgence _ , several orders of magnitude bigger than our tiny starfighter and several orders smaller than the Star Destroyer we were faced with. The cruiser was as new and shiny as the Star Destroyers and TIE fighters, developed and manufactured after the end of the Clone Wars. The Empire was quick to decommission all Clone Wars tech and replace it. Even the clones themselves, or so the rumor went.

“Please transmit codes and squadron name--” the operator began. “Wait, those are the new prototypes, aren’t they?”

“Sure are,” Mitch replied, smugness in his voice.

“My goodness, those are beautiful,” he whistled.

Mitch scoffed, humor in his voice. “You can’t even see them yet. Stick to your scanners.”

“Yes sir,” the operator barked. “Codes and squadron name please.”

I sent the codes out to transmit to the  _ Resurgence _ before speaking up. “Lucky Sq--”

“Fry’s Squadron,” Fry interrupted.

“No, we aren’t,” I snipped.

“Wyvern Squadron,” Gordon declared.

“Excellent, welcome back, Wyvern Squadron,” the operator greeted us. “Oh, and Mitch.”

There was a moment of silence after the static ended. I turned the name over in my mind.  _ Wyvern Squadron _ , I thought. A smile quietly crept over my lips.

“Really?” Hubri asked. “ _ Wyvern _ Squadron? You know all the squads here are numbered, right?”

Gordon sounded defensively as he replied. “Well, they’ll run out of numbers eventually and--”

“That’s not how numbers work!”

“I like it,” I spoke up.

“Yeah,” Lyrilis chimed in. “I think it suits us.”


	13. Part Two

**Strategic Losses**


	14. Change of Mission

I found myself sitting around the same oblong table of the briefing room I was becoming used to. We were all gathered, once again waiting for Captain Adrian’s arrival. I looked around the table. Hubri’s scowl meant she was fine. Lyrilis seemed eager, watching the doorway to the debriefing room. Gordon watched the door as well, but I figured it was for someone else.

Salak was still nowhere to be found. We expected to see Salak when we returned, but we were informed he was still deployed with no ETA.

It’d been a week since we returned from Fresia. We were granted rest after the mission so we could recover from our injuries. My hearing was mostly back--I’d begun to hear the whispering bellow of the _Resurgence_ ’s engines again, the sound much deeper than the mid-pitched hum that freighters had.

The door opened. “We have a situation,” Captain Adrian announced as he entered the room with military briskness. He pulled up a holoprojector on the table and a planet was displayed in front of us. 

I saw Hubri’s eyes go wide. “Dathomir,” she whispered.

 The captain grunted agreement. “Correct. We’re headed to Dathomir on rumors of Sith activity. According to Senator Organa, you all have investigated the Sith before, yes?” We nodded. “Then this mission is yours. We don’t know much. We’re really just following a rumor, but a rumor we believe is worth following.”

“When I was a Padawan, there were no Sith. Then there were two and they took down the Republic,” Lyrilis said, watching the hologram spin on its axis. “Now we don’t even know how many there are.”

“With luck, we will see them extinct again,” the captain replied. “The hyperspace jump will be quite short. We should arrive at Dathomir within the next six hours. Prepare yourself and be ready to reconvene as soon as we reach the Dathomir system. Any questions?”

Gordon cleared his throat, the sound like gurgling water. “Yes, uh, where is Salak?”

“He is rendezvousing with the _Resurgence_ in the Dathomir system. Unfortunately, he will not return before you all disembark for your mission,” the captain explained.

“Oh,” Gordon sighed, “I see.” His beady eyes settled on the holoprojector, discontent.

Lyrilis spoke up. “How will we be getting down to Dathomir?” she asked. “We won’t be, err-- Flying ourselves, would we?”

“Oh no,” the captain said. I watched Lyrilis’s shoulder relax in relief. “Chak’ard will take you down in the _Stalwart_. He will not be joining you, as he has his own mission, but we don’t have a ship for you all to borrow. When you are finished with your mission, you will comm us for a pickup.”

“So much for a quick getaway,” Hubri grumbled.

“You shouldn’t need one. We don’t believe there’s any immediate danger down there, only evidence,” the captain explained.

“We don’t need backup, cap'n,” Fry spoke up. “I’ll be their backup. I killed one of them Inquisitors on Korriban.”

“You did not,” I retorted, remembering the feeling of the Nautolan’s death as my blaster bolt sunk into him. _I took that life_.

“Your experience is precisely why you’ve been selected for this, Fry, fear not,” the captain said, appeasing the droid. “If there’s no more questions, you all are dismissed. Prepare for the mission. It might be a long one.”

 

We made our way to the bridge as the intercom blared for our presence, followed by the same voice announcing our return to real space in five minutes.

The bridge was as white as the rest of the ship, the only color being the blue of hyperspace that filled the viewport. Crewmembers buzzed to and from their stations, their senses on the monitors and readouts in front of them. I heard a countdown in the cacophony and blue gave way to the black of the dark expanse of space, speckled lightly with stars that, unlike from the ground of Fresia, did not twinkle--the way I knew the stars.

Captain Adrian approached us to greet us when someone yelled out, “Star Destroyer on our scanners!”

“What?” the captain demanded.

“It’s--! It’s non-operational?” the voice yelled back, coming from a young man in a uniform matching the captain’s.

“Energy signals are low,” a woman’s voice reported. “It’s on emergency power. Seems only its systems online are the repulsorlifts and life support.”

Lyrilis’s eyebrows knit. “I can’t sense any life aboard, at least not from here.”

The captain turned towards us. “Change of mission,” he declared. “You all are to go aboard that Star Destroyer and scavenge it.”

“What?” Hubri protested. “You want us to board that?”

“The Empire doesn’t just abandon ships for no reason, captain,” I pointed out.

“Especially not Star Destroyers, I know,” Adrian agreed, “but this is too big of an opportunity to pass up. A derelict Star Destroyer could have plenty of supplies, weapons, information. We’ve already sent out or assigned all our other squads to different missions. Do this quickly and we can get you planetside after that.”

“I don’t know about this,” Lyrilis sighed.

Fry adjusted his shoulders to push his chassis out. “I think this here is a fine mission, cap’n.”

“Chak’ard will fly you to the Star Destroyer. He won’t stay there, but you can comm us when you’ve gathered all you can for a pickup,” the captain instructed. “Prioritize information and medical supplies. Weapons after that.”

We left the bridge for the hangar. Chak waited for us, leaned with his arms crossed against his freighter. “So we’re scrappers now,” Lyrilis announced to him.

“The Rebellion needs the resources,” Chak grunted. “Scavenging work is as important as intel work around here with the Empire’s stranglehold on manufacturing. Everyone does it at some point. Just be glad you got an interesting assignment.”

“I’d still prefer the Sith assignment,” I complained. “At least I know they’d kill me outright. Imperials would capture me and prolong it.”

Chak gave a short laugh. “Don’t get captured then.”

 

We watched the _Stalwart_ detach from the dock of the Star Destroyer, safely inside the airlock. It was tight, with barely enough room for Gordon alone, let alone all of us. “Cramped,” Hubri complained.

I stood in front of a keypad, examining it for a way in. “Working on it,” I said. I entered a code, picking at random. The keypad glowed red, “DENIED” displaying on the tiny screen in High Galactic.

“Lemme take a look,” Fry called, shoving his way over to me. He examined the keypad and typed out a random code. The keypad glowed red again. “Well, I reckon we’re stuck.”

I knelt down to the keypad, peeling a panel of metal from it. “Let me poke around. Shouldn’t be too hard to get into.”

Lyrilis poked her finger between me and Fry, pressing the “5” key. After a few seconds, the keypad beeped and the door opened in front of us. Hubri pushed free from the cramped airlock and into the hallway.

“How?” I asked, bewildered.

She shrugged, a cocky smile on her face. “There’s five of us.”

“Guys, get in here,” Hubri called from inside the Star Destroyer.

I walked into the hallway and felt a horrible wave of nausea pass over me. The smell of rotten death overwhelmed me, hanging in the air like a haze. “The hell is that smell?” Lyrilis asked, leaning against the wall, pale.

The hallway was in a state of disrepair, lights dimly flickering above us and what were likely impeccably clean and polished walls at one point were smudged with grime and scraped.

I reached into the Force around us, disturbed by the emptiness I was greeted with. I reached for any life, anything. Everything near me was cold, but far away, there was a light of life. It was faint and uncertain, like it was obscured behind a curtain.

“There’s something alive in here,” I whispered.

Lyrilis nodded, still sickly. “I sense it, too.”

“Well, I vote we get a move on, partners,” Fry announced. “Start lookin’ for those supplies.” He began walking down the hall, pulling his slugthrower from his chassis. We followed--Fry didn’t seem keen on letting us debate. I unholstered my blaster, my senses on high for danger.

I heard a gasp from Hubri ahead of me. I peered ahead. The body of a stormtrooper, his armor, ripped apart like it was made of paper, exposed his chest, bloody and horribly wounded. Handprints of once-sticky blood lined the hallway, smeared down its length. I heard Lyrilis vomit behind me.

“This is more than we signed up for,” Hubri said. “We should call for pickup now. Not worth dying in here.” She tapped her comm. “Captain Adrian, come in. We need pickup immediately.”

I waited for noise on our comms, searching frequencies. “Captain Adrian, come in,” Lyrilis repeated, still wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“We’re being jammed,” I said. “There’s no incoming frequencies.”

Gordon gripped his axe closer. “I don’t like this.”

I swapped through comm channels one more time. “We have to figure out what’s jamming us and turn it off.”

“The life we sensed,” Lyrilis guessed. “They must be survivors of whatever happened here. They’re probably jamming everything except specific Imperial channels.”

“You’re probably right,” Hubri nodded.

“Then let’s go meet these fellas in need of help,” Fry declared.

We continued down the hall, stepping past more and more bodies. Not just stormtroopers, but officers and technicians, all of them in torn apart and soiled clothing. The long hallway seemed to never end. Star Destroyers are massive from the outside, but the size didn’t set in until I was walking the length of it.

 I paused a moment. I sensed movement ahead of us. Faint. I thought my senses were playing tricks on me until I sensed it again. “Stop,” I whispered.

The figure moved again and I got a better sense for it. White armor covered his body, whole, unlike the corpse we saw before. He lumbered up slowly with a significant limp. “They’re injured,” Lyrilis whispered. “We should help them.” She walked up ahead of us, gripping her pike.

“They’re Imperial, who cares about them?” Hubri hissed.

“They could help us get off this thing,” Lyrilis hissed back. She turned to the stormtrooper. “Do you need help?” she called down the hallway.

The stormtrooper let out a horrible screech, his arms thrashing around him. He ran at Lyrilis, his limping gait suddenly replaced with considerable speed. Lyrilis screamed out, activating her lightsaber and holding it in front of her. The stormtrooper ran into her blade in his frenzy, letting out another horrid sound.

The stormtrooper fell to the ground, still. “T-that was terrifying,” Lyrilis whispered, shaking. Her heavy breathing was the only sound in the silent hall.

The trooper began thrashing around, attempting to get up. I shot at it repeatedly. Gordon pushed me out of the way and swung his vibroaxe downwards to the stormtrooper’s head. It returned to stillness and what little of it I could sense in the Force disappeared.

“Aim for the heads,” Gordon said, nudging the body with his boot.

“What the hell was that?” I asked. “Sith doing?”

Lyrilis shook her head. “They would feel tainted if that were the case.” She turned to Hubri. “You’re a witch of Dathomir, aren’t you?”

Hubri’s eyes narrowed. “That has nothing to do with this.”

“We _are_ above Dathomir.”

“This is not a Witch’s doing, Vann!” Hubri yelled. Her voice carried down the hallway, echoing. Several monstrous moans echoed back. Hubri cursed under her breath. “It doesn’t matter what caused this, we just need to find a way out.”

We all nodded. “The sounds came from that way,” Lyrilis said, pointing down the hallway behind us.

“Well, y’all wanna head into the thick of it or head away from it?” Fry asked. “Because I reckon we take this head-on.”

“Terrible idea, droid,” I sighed. “We came from that direction. I sensed life down this way, so let’s keep going this way.”

“Very well.” Fry walked forward down the hallway, poorly twirling his slugthrower on his finger and whistling as he had before; more binary screeching than a whistle.

“No self-preservation,” Gordon commented.

“Suppose waiter droids rarely end up in situations like this,” I said. “Don’t really need to be programmed for any of this.”

 

We stood in a large, circular room at the end of the long hallway, staring at a cylindrical column in the middle of the room. Medical and science equipment lined the walls. Vials and samples were laid out and tipped over, unidentifiable liquids long since dried up, leaving behind residue and crystals stuck to the counters.

Gordon pointed to the center column. “Computers,” he said.

“Hopefully they still work,” I replied. I walked up the console and tapped some keys. The screen remained black. I reached under the console and found a tangle of wires. I sorted through them, unplugging them and plugging them back in one at a time. Finally, I heard the console start up with a mechanical wheeze of electronics.

“Lemme download all this here data,” Fry said, taking a data chip from his chassis and inserting it into the console. He placed it back in his circuits. “This was a research vessel, I reckon. The ISD _Vector_.”

Lyrilis inspected some overturned vials, turning them over with the Force. “What were they researching?”

“Biomedical research. Can’t find much else, partner.”

“Biomedical…” she whispered. She set the vials down, quickly catching one before it rolled off the counter. “Do you have any readouts for the ship’s systems?”

Fry was silent for a moment before speaking. “Life support, reactor, artificial gravity, and repulsor lifts are all operational,” he reported.

“Any information on where the jammer could be?” Hubri asked.

“Lemme look ‘er up--”

A door hissed opened behind us and I got a sense of something horrible, like death in the Force--empty but present. It smelled like death, too, strong enough to pierce the persistent smell of rot. I looked to the door, Gordon beside it and five forms in Imperial uniforms just beyond where the door was.

“Uhh, guys,” Gordon pointed to the room. “I accidentally opened it.”

“Shh,” Lyrilis hushed him.

My muscles were lead as I watched the open door. The dead Imperials stood in place, looking around. It was hard to tell how cognisant they were--they stumbled around thoughtlessly, like they weren’t in control of their bodies; they moved more like beasts. An officer stood among them, her face visible. It was pocked with disease and horribly swollen. Her eyes were blank.

The sound of breaking glass echoed through the room. A vial sat shattered next to Lyrilis. I held my breath, my hand hovering near my weapon.

A horrible screech replaced the glass. I drew my blaster as one of the stormtroopers ran for Gordon. I pulled the trigger, the bolt sinking into the stormtrooper’s ruined helmet. The stormtrooper fell to the ground, no longer thrashing around.

Lyrilis ignited her lightsaber as the rest of the Imperials rushed for Gordon. He scrambled backward, swinging his axe wide, slicing them through their torsos. Lyrilis threw her hand forward and flames caught on the assailing troopers. They ran for their targets, not seeming to care about the flames clinging to their armor.

“These rascals are mighty quick!” Fry exclaimed, fleeing from the stormtrooper closing in on him, slugthrower in hand. The stormtrooper grabbed Fry’s arm and with a single motion, ripped the droid’s arm from his torso, taking the slugthrower with it. “Mighty strong, too!”

 _There’s no way it should be that strong_ , I thought. I aimed for another, shooting for its head. The bolt landed as Lyrilis slashed at it with her saber. It crumpled to the ground without another motion.

Gordon let out a wailing cry. The officer hung from him, biting into his shoulder. He desperately threw her off, her body landing hard against the ground. Hubri fired her crossbow and what remained of the officer returned to the Force.

An Imperial scientist, his lab coat tattered and soiled, lunged for me, attempting to lock his arms around me. I managed to push him away, knocking him in the chest. He coughed out a screech, liquid sputtering from his mouth and onto me. He lunged again and I aimed my blaster to shoot him, but he suddenly froze, his blank eyes going wide with fear. He lifted into the air, revealing Lyrilis holding her hand out to him.

With a flick of her hand, the scientist flew across the room. He collided with the final scientist, the force of the impact sending a blast of energy through the room. I’d never felt someone channel so much power in the Force, at least not like this.

Lyrilis panted, still holding her pose. “I-- I didn’t--” she stammered. “I didn’t know I could do that like _that_.”

Gordon let out a loud breath. “This bite burns,” he said, poking at it, cautiously. “Like a bad Killik bite."

“Let’s not open any more doors, understood?” Hubri snipped. “We need to figure out where we are and where we need to go first. Fry, look through that data some more. Look for computer rooms, security rooms, anywhere there might be a jammer. Gordon, you stand guard…”

My attention trailed off as I picked up the faint sound of voices--not shrieking as the monstrous Imperials did, but conversation. “Shh,” I said to Hubri. “Listen.”

Hubri complied without protest. The room around us grew silent and then, faintly, the voices spoke again. I reached into the Force, sensing for life. They were close. They were--

“Behind that door,” Hubri said, pointing to the door opposite the open one. “I sense them. Four of them.”

Lyrilis nodded. “I sense them, too. We should speak with them. They must know what’s going on here.”

“They could turn off that jammer, too,” I added.

“Then them Imps are our best bet,” Fry said, soldering his arm back to his torso with a torch in his finger. It hung limp next to him, but it was attached.

“You going to connect the wiring?” I asked.

Fry adjusted his hat with his operational hand. “Later, partner. I can shoot with either hand.”

“If you try something stupid, we will leave you behind,” Hubri threatened, walking over to the door. She held her crossbow out at the door as she attempted to access the panel. “Damn,” she spat. “They’ve got a hefty encryption on this door.”

I looked over the panel, typing in various commands, all of them rejected. “They really don’t want anyone in here.”

“A bit overkill,” Lyrilis commented. “I don’t think those monsters could use the panel, with or without a lock.”

“What do you think caused them to end up like that?” Gordon asked. “They all look diseased, but what disease would make them lose their minds?”

I made another attempt to get into the door, the panel beeping its denial once again. “Ugh,” I groaned. “Maybe they aren’t worth talking to.”

“I got it,” Lyrilis said, igniting her pike. “Stand back!” she yelled to the other side of the door. She thrust her pike into the metal of the door. She sliced through the thick metal, struggling against a fair amount of resistance. After a few moments, she kicked out a hole just barely big enough for Gordon to get through.

“Halt, halt!” an Imperial accent called. “What have you done? You ruined our hiding place! We were safe from the diseased in there!” 

We entered the room, our weapons drawn and ready for an unfriendly turn of events. The source of the voice, an officer with a gaunt face and a bit of a limp as he hobbled forward, had his hands raised, carefully eyeing Lyrilis’s white blade. Behind him stood three stormtroopers, their armor dirty and rough. They stood with their blaster carbines pointed at us.

“How the hell did you get in here?” the officer demanded.

“A ship,” Hubri shrugged. “Surely you realize how attractive a derelict Imperial vessel would look to good-for-nothing pirates, right?”

“Well--”

Lyrilis held her pike steady in front of her. “What is this place?” she asked.

“That’s classified,” he deflected.

“Okay,” she said, relaxing her pose. She turned on her heel. “Let’s leave, guys. Let them fend for themselves.”

“Wait!” the officer called out after her. “Wait, stop. Please help us get out of here,” he begged.

She smirked and turned back to face him. “First, you tell us what happened here.”

“Fine,” the officer sighed. “I am Captain Zando. We were researching a contagion aboard this vessel. We were trying to weaponize it, I think. I’m not certain, the higher-ups were always vague about it,” he rambled. “Anyways, about a week ago, everyone suddenly went berserk. They all ended up like the ones out there. I feel safe saying that these troopers and I are the only survivors.”

“Contagion?” I asked. I felt nausea come over me, though I knew it was just my mind playing tricks on me. “Is it airborne?”

Zando shook his head. “You need direct contact. I believe simply touching something infected is enough to turn you. That bite there--” he pointed to Gordon’s shoulder “--should take over in about six hours. Hate to say this, but you all should say goodbye now and put him out of his misery before he turns.”

Hubri crossed her arms. “How dare you say that,” she spat. “There has to be a cure. No way the Empire was weaponizing a _disease_ without finding its cure first.”

“Not much of a weapon if it can be so easily stopped, though, eh?” the officer gave a sick chuckle. “If there is a cure, it’d be a more secure lab than this one.” He sighed. “I’ve told you everything I know. Now get us out of here. You said you had a ship?”

“We need that jammer down first,” Lyrilis demanded. “I’m assuming you all put it up?”

“Yes, that was us.”

“Why would you jam signals if you’re trying to get rescue?” Gordon narrowed his eyes.

“Standard Imperial protocol,” the officer retorted.

Lyrilis out a tired laugh. “You don’t think for yourself, huh? Did they beat self-preservation out of you in your Academy?”

“Do not taunt me, Jedi.” He glared down at her. “I’ve been through too much to be bothered by your belittlement.”

Lyrilis stood up straighter, her shoulders back. “We can’t help you until that jammer is down, understood?”

“We can’t disable it from here,” Zando explained, his posture returning to a military habit. “We turned off remote access. You’ll have to get to the bridge to access the communication tower. The elevators are still operational, take that.”

“You’re not coming?” I asked.

The captain looked to me. “No, pirate, we’ll stay here.”

I looked to my allies. I didn’t like just leaving them unsupervised, but I knew none of us should stay behind. Besides, we’d hardly made them captives--the troopers were pointing weapons at us as much as we were at them.

“Fine,” Lyrilis declared. “But if you try anything, you’ll regret it.”

Officer Zando laughed. “We will regret nothing.”

 

We set off through the halls of the Star Destroyer, following a map in Fry’s databanks. We found ourselves quite far from an operational elevator. Many of the elevator routes relied on power supplies that weren’t running, leaving us with only the sparse emergency elevators to rely on.

We came to a catwalk over a large hangar. The sheer size of it spared it of looking too horrible, but it still showed signs of those dead Imperials. Below us sat a handful of walkers, several TIE fighters, and a sizable number of diseased troopers, all stumbling about in armor ranging from spotless to horribly destroyed.

“We could all take one of them there starfighters,” Fry suggested. “Sail on outta here ‘n back to _Resurgence_.”

“You going to be bait for those diseased freaks?” Hubri asked. “They seem to like your circuits.”

“Let’s not forget having to fly a squadron of TIEs towards a Rebel frigate and hope they answer their comms _before_ they start shooting,” I added.

“Fine, fine,” Fry waved his working hand, “it was a bad idea.”

We made it across the suspended catwalk, landing in a narrow hallway. The elevator was just ahead with its lights on--a good sign.

“Says here there’s a laboratory marked ‘authorized personnel only’ right on before the bridge,” Fry reported. “I reckon there’s good things in there.”

Gordon cradled the bite on his neck with his head. “If there’s a cure anywhere, it’s there,” he argued. His speech was coming slower than normal. I tried to push away the thoughts of what we would have to do if he--

“You and Fry go to the lab,” Lyrilis said. “Hubri, Meena, and I will head to the bridge to turn off that jammer. We need to minimize our time here or we’ll all end up like…” her voice trailed off. “Anyways, let’s split up.”

“That lab should hold some interesting treasure, eh, Gordon?” Fry said. “We are on a scavenging mission.”

Lyrilis shook her head. “We’re abandoning that mission, Fry. Find a cure and get out. If you can’t a cure then… well, get out. Survival is the most important right now.”

“Well, let’s get to surviving then, partners.”

 

Gordon and Fry disembarked the elevator. We continued our ascent to the bridge of the Star Destroyer. I didn’t like splitting up, but Lyrilis was right. The worst we would encounter alone would be more of those diseased.

I let the thought sit with for a moment in the silence between us all. I tried to fight the trembling in my hands.

“I sense something,” Lyrilis whispered, her voice barely audible.

“What is it?” I whispered back. I waited for her reply, but she never answered. I could feel my anxiety grow in my chest. 

After another minute in the elevator, it stopped. The door opened up to the wide bridge, a massive viewport ahead of us, displaying the vastness of space, Dathomir’s red glow appearing in the corner of the window. Trenches created a walkway to the front of the bridge. Standing at its end, staring out at the beautiful space, was a cloaked figure.

They turned to face us--a man, human despite his grey skin. His face was splotched with horrible red sores like the other diseased. He looked at us with bright yellow eyes with a fierce and horrid hatred in them. There was darkness around him. A horrible feeling in the Force.

“Jedi…” he whispered, his voice soft and hissing. “Do you know madness?”


	15. Vector

Hubri fired her crossbow at the man without hesitation. He held up his hand in time to absorb the energy, the red bolt sinking into his flesh. He didn’t flinch. He seemed to feel no pain.

He began cackling, the sound of his crazed laughter echoing through the empty bridge. He ignited a red blade, and then another from the same hilt. He swung the saber around himself and approached, a slow step at a time. I gripped the blaster tighter in my hand, watching him intently.

The double-bladed saber came flying towards us in an arc of crimson, the blades slicing past us. I felt a screaming burn on my arm and my vision crossed with a flash of pain. I suppressed a sick feeling from the smell of burnt flesh and clothes that filled the air around me.

“Spread out so he can’t hit all of us,” Lyrilis managed. I could hear the pain in her voice, coming from behind clenched teeth, but yet she still stepped towards the Inquisitor. “Stop,” she called out to him. I took off to the side of the bridge, Hubri scrambled towards the other. “Your quarrel is with me,” Lyrilis continued, “not them.”

The Inquisitor laughed again, throwing his head back. He ceased his laughter abruptly and looked at her with a burning intensity. “My quarrel is with all of you,” he snarled, and he charged forward at Lyrilis.

“No!” I yelled, throwing my hand out towards him, the lightsaber burn on my arm crying out in protest of movement. I felt a surge of power through the pain as he flew backward into the consoles against the viewport. A loud crash echoed through the bridge and he crumpled to the ground on his back.

He laughed again, louder than before. A cough overtook his laughter as fluid came to his mouth, sputtering out around him. “You all are untrained. Your power is--” he coughed again, more liquid coming up, “--raw. Untamed.”

Lyrilis held her pike out towards him as he began to stand. “I have been trained,” she spat.

The Inquisitor laughed. “Not well enough.” He charged forward once again, much quicker than the first time, and swung his saber at Lyrilis. She held her blade out to stop his swing but his strength overpowered hers. She cried out as the saber sliced across her torso, falling backward. He readied his blade for another strike. I aimed at him, ready to pull the trigger.

A white glow surrounded Lyrilis--an aura of pure Force. She looked around herself, bewildered. The sense radiated out from around her, passing over me in waves. The sensation was warm and comforting. It was nearly disorienting in its pleasantness. I could no longer feel the burn wound on my arm. When I looked down at it, the wound had already healed. Even the scar was shrinking in size.

I recognized the feeling in the Force. Sil.

The glow subsided, returning to its origin from Lyrilis’s pocket. The Inquisitor stared down at Lyrilis, equally as surprised as she was. Seizing on the opening, I pulled the trigger, shooting him in his shoulder. His attention was drawn to me, his yellow eyes glaring intensely at me, before a shot from Hubri’s crossbow sunk into his jaw, knocking it off. He stumbled off balance from the force of the crossbow bolt, nearly tumbling into the trench next to him. He looked to Hubri, raging seething around him. He bared yellow, rotting teeth at her.

Lyrilis stood up in front of him. She lifted her arm into the air and the Inquisitor's eyes went wide as he was pulled off his feet. He struggled against her grip, thrashing wildly in the air. “ _LET GO_ ,” he screeched, his voice shrill and panicked.

“Shoot him!” Lyrilis cried out.

I fired my blaster at him, unloading several shots at him. He cried out in pain as Hubri and I fired our weapons, his body further disintegrating from disease and injury. He whipped his head and what of his limbs he could move around, desperate to free himself from Lyrilis’s grip.

He stopped his thrashing. What darkness still sustained him--whatever it was--dissipated.

 

Lyrilis dropped her grip on him, her hand shaking and her breathing heavy. She fell to her knees in front of the Inquisitor’s body. I hurried to her, kneeling next to her. “Are you okay?” I asked.

Lyrilis gently nudged me away. “I’m fine. Just tired,” she dismissed through labored breathing. She propped her pike up and pushed herself to her feet, leaning on it. “Where’s that jammer?”

I got to my feet and we started looking for communication controls amongst the rows of the consoles. I found what I was looking for and turned the jammer off. After a few moments, the comlink in my ear buzzed to life with static. “-ome in, Wyvern Squadron. Come in,” a voice played.

Lyrilis’s back straightened as she sat on her knees. “Yes! This is Wyvern Squadron! We’re aboard the ISD _Vector_. The situation is… it’s complicated.”

“Lyrilis Vann?” Captain Adrian’s voice replied.

“Yes, sir, it’s me.”

“Full mission update, immediately.”

She took a breath. “This Star Destroyer, it was a biomedical research vessel. An experiment here… went wrong. A virus has affected everyone on board. It’s like they’re dead, but alive enough to attack us. There was an Inquisitor aboard, but we’ve neutralized him.”

“An Inquisitor?” Fry asked over the comm.

“Is Gordon okay?” I asked.

“I reckon we found a cure,” Fry replied.

“Bring it back to the _Resurgence_ immediately,” Captain Adrian spoke up.

“Err, about that, cap’n… It was more a treatment than, say, a ‘cure’,” Fry explained.

Hubri sighed. “Look, captain, we could use that pickup now. I don’t want to spend any more time here than I have to.”

The captain was silent, the silence saying more than his following words would. “You cannot come aboard the _Resurgence_ if you’ve been exposed to such a contagion.”

Lyrilis’s face dropped. “So… so what do we do?”

“I will discuss it with the medical staff here. I need their opinion. For now, consider your own escape,” the captain said. The static faded out.

Lyrilis looked at us. I felt a brief flash of anger in her before sighing, the emotion ceasing. “We saw TIEs in the hangar. Worst case scenario, we fly those down to Dathomir.”

“Hear that, Fry?” I asked into my comm. “Meet at the rendezvous point.”

“Can do, buckaroo.”

Hubri turned to me, her expression dripping with annoyance. “What the hell is a ‘buckaroo’?”

 

We made our way down the elevator to the rendezvous point, just outside the hangar. Silently, I questioned how we would retrieve the TIE fighters with the stormtroopers around them. Further, I dreaded the idea of flying one of those death contraptions of a starfighter. Pilots at DeNav flocked to the Imperial Navy once they got the courage to chase glory or whatever they saw in the Empire, but I vowed to never find myself in one of the Empire’s ships, no matter what. There was plenty of good piloting work without joining a military of butchers and monsters.

The elevator dinged and Fry and Gordon hobbled out of the lift. Lyrilis gasped upon seeing them. “What happened in that lab?”

The smell of metallic blood cut through the general smell of rot that I was becoming numb to. The two were coated in sticky red. Blood clung to their clothes and dripped from them. Most disturbingly, Gordon’s arm--the remaining one--was missing from his torso.

“There’s a monster in there,” Gordon said. “Mnggal-Mnggal, it said its name is Mnggal-Mnggal. I--”

“I killed the varmint,” Fry cut in, twirling his blaster.

Hubri narrowed her eyes. “So where’s Gordon’s arm?”

“The monster cut it off,” Gordon explained. “On the bright side, I think ripping it off got rid of the disease.”

“The bright side?” I questioned. “You’re missing an arm!”

“I’ve lost one before,” Gordon shrugged, only his shoulder raising on his left side.

Hubri shook her head. “He’s in shock,” she dismissed.

“Has the bleeding stopped?” Lyrilis asked.

“The wound is cauterized,” Gordon nodded.

Lyrilis took in a breath. “Fry, are you in working condition again?” The droid lifted only one arm. “Repair yourself. Meena can help.” She produced a compact medical kit from her jacket pocket. “I can disinfect and wrap your wound, Gordon. Ours, too. I don’t trust open wounds in here.”

We got to work preparing for… whatever it was we had to face. Predictability was crumbling the further we trekked through the Star Destroyer. There was no guarantee the path we took prior was still the same, if it’d be easy to traverse or even safe, but I realized that no path through this Star Destroyer would be safe.

I managed to get Fry back together with his help, though he mostly just recounted his harrowing encounter with this Mnggal-Mnggal. “The critter was this huge, beatin’ heart, spurtin’ blood all over Gordon ‘n me. Fell easy with some sharpshootin’.”

“Gordon lost an arm,” I argued, trying not to dwell on the mental image of a pulsing heart and how it could injure Gordon so seriously.

“Strong feller but not a tough one.”

“Uh-huh.” I attached the final wire into its clamp. “Run your diagnostics.”

Fry nodded and went blank for a moment, a few binary chirps playing from his electronics and systems. “All systems operational,” he said finally. He moved his arm around before checking his appendage, all of the joints bending as commanded.

“Are we ready to move on?” Lyrilis asked, done with the wrappings on Gordon’s shoulder. We all nodded wearily. “Then let’s move.”

We marched from our resting spot by the elevator and walked out to the catwalk over the hangar. The large room smelled like metal and rot. The scene below was horrible. The screeching of metal rang through the hangar as stormtroopers and officers ripped chunks of metal from the few remaining TIE fighters. They shoveled the crumpled sheets of metal into their horrible, dripping mouths like hungry children. Some ripped at the starfighters for food, desperately scooping wiring and paneling into their mouths, but some just seemed hellbent on some sick destruction.

Lyrilis tapped her comm. “Escape plan has changed, Captain,” she announced. “We don’t have one. The beasts have torn apart all the starfighters. Can you send a transport?”

There was a moment of quiet. “That’s… That’s no good, Rebels,” Captain Adrian responded. His voice sounded distressed. “Even if we could send a transport, we can’t have you back on the _Resurgence_ for quite a while during the decontamination process.”

“So we’re stuck here?” I asked, my voice dropping. I knew this was the case, but I couldn’t help my frustration.

“Were there any other survivors on the vessel?” the captain asked.

“No,” Hubri lied. “Not that we have found.”

“Alright,” he sighed. “Me and my men will continue to brainstorm ways to get you off that ship. Keep your comms open and check in as often as you can.”

“Understood, captain,” Lyrilis responded. She turned to Hubri, her eyebrows knit. “Why’d you lie? We could get those men out like we promise.”

“You think the captain is going to send a transport here if he knows there’s Imperials still alive?” Hubri challenged.

“You think the captain is sending a transport here at all?” Lyrilis retorted. “This is in our hands now. I think I have a plan.”

Our comms buzzed to life again. “Captain?” I asked to the static.

A Core World accent greeted me. “Yes, it’s me,” Zando replied.

“Oh,” Hubri sighed. “That captain.”

“The monsters have seemed to have developed a taste for metal. This wasn’t part of the plan,” Zando reported.

I stared down through the catwalk at the feast of starfighters happening below us. “We noticed.”

“Wait,” Gordon spoke up. “Plan?”

“Yeah, partner, what’s this about a plan?” Fry questioned.

“That is confidential!” Zando screeched.

Hubri sighed. “If I die because you're bent on being a lapdog to your Emperor--”

“None of this was part of the plan,” Zando explained. “It was just supposed to be a disease. A bioweapon. We didn’t know this would happen. I didn’t, at least.”

“Just a bioweapon,” Lyrilis scoffed. “So what do you propose?”

“Do you have a ship or not?”

Lyrilis thought a moment. “It’s scrap now.”

“Then what do _you_ propose?”

She clicked her comm off. “We need to take this thing down.”

There was a heavy, near-crushing silence over us. “Lyrilis,” I whispered, treading carefully through the oppressive quiet. “Take it down where?”

“Dathomir,” she replied.

The silence held us again. The mission changed again. Survival was no longer the mission. The survival of others was now the precipice of what we needed to do. If we crashed the Star Destroyer, the diseased would all die and--

“We would die,” Gordon spoke up.

Lyrilis nodded. “But we could live. We need to do something. If we stay on this ship any longer we will catch the disease and we will lose our minds like they have. We either die here or down there with the rest of these monsters. And there’s the chance we live down there. Do you all trust me?”

I took a breath. I looked to Lyrilis, her face braver than it should’ve been. I didn’t want to die--I’d finally found something I could live for, but because of that, I suppose it was also worth dying for. I tried to hide the tremble in my voice. “I trust you.”

Gordon nodded. “Me, too, Jedi.”

Fry gave a whistle. “I can be put back together if my head rolls loose.”

Hubri crossed her arms, her eyes staring out the hangar to the red-bathed planet below us. “I suppose you’re right. At least I’ll die there.”

Lyrilis turned back to her comm. “Here’s the plan, Zando. We’re crashing this ship. Destroying all the diseased so it can’t spread.”

“Wait, wait!” Zando cried. “We’ll all die!”

“Maybe we will, maybe we won’t,” Lyrilis replied. Her tone was cold. “If you live, run and never go back to the Empire. If you die, know that it’s because of what you’ve done here.”

Zando was quiet for a moment, likely facing the same crisis we already sorted through. “Very well. I suppose I was complacent in what happened here. I take responsibility--”

“Don’t be so noble about it,” Hubri spat.

“Fine, fine. There are enviro-suits in the maintenance shaft, I’ll send the precise location. There should be an airlock nearby that will take you to the outside hull of the ship. You have to access the reactor from the outside.”

A beep played from our datapads--schematics of the ship and blinking dots labeled with our proposed path. “Received the data,” Lyrilis reported. “We’ll head out immediately.”

“Good luck.” The static in my ear faded out.

“Surely you don’t think this is a good idea,” Hubri asked once the comm died out.

Lyrilis shook her head, examining the maps on her datapad. “Of course not, but it’s the best one I’ve got.”

 

We slipped into the maintenance shaft, barely big enough for Gordon to fit in. A red light strobed in the shaft, its siren long since broken. The pulsing red light passed over the tangle of tubes and wires and the bodies of maintenance workers we carefully stepped over. I could never conceptualize the number of people a ship this size could hold until I saw them all dead.

We would stop every few meters or so and fire a shot down the hall, checking if the bodies ahead would wake and run for us like starving beasts. None of the corpses stirred. They were truly dead. I felt morbid relief each time a bolt sailed down the hall with no moans to greet it. 

We walked in silence, Lyrilis leading us down the path on her datapad. We rounded a corner and Fry mimicked clearing his throat. “Y’all know I have a missus back home?”

Lyrilis stopped in her tracks and looked to Fry, her expression blank. “Are you still malfunctioning?”

“Don’t believe me?” Fry asked. “I have a picture of the broad.” He reached into his chassis and rummaged around for a moment before coming up empty. “Well, it’s around.”

Lyrilis turned back to the path in front of us and kept walking. “Where did you even come from?” she asked.

“The wild West,” Fry replied. “A nasty place where I was sheriff.”

“Wild?” I asked. “Like, Wild Space or something?”

“Wild Space is in the Eastern parts of the galaxy, spacer,” Hubri snipped.

“Then were is the ‘wild West’?”

Fry shrugged. “Don’t remember.”

Lyrilis lead us up a ladder and into an easier-to-navigate passageway. “We have to cut through some barracks,” she reported. “Seems to be the quickest path.”

We approached the door to the barracks and Lyrilis lowered her head to sense the inside of the room. As she stood there, concentrating, Fry reached over her shoulder and knocked on the door.

Scratching and screeching erupted from inside the room. Chaotic noise filled the silence around us.

Hubri pulled her sidearm from its holster and aimed it at Fry. “Pull one more stunt like that again and you’re toast. Understood?” Her finger wasn’t near the trigger, but I could feel her patience waning. We were all on edge.

“Now let’s not pull weapons on each other,” Gordon urged.

Hubri scowled and put her blaster back in its holster. “I swear, I’m going to end up ripping that droid’s circuits out,” she whispered.

Lyrilis sighed and ignited her lightsaber. “Prepare yourself.”

I unholstered my blaster as she pressed the panel to open the door. Hubri pushed into the room as soon as the door opened, firing a bolt from her crossbow into the chest of a diseased stormtrooper, knocking him off balance. He shrieked, his limbs loose beside him.

Lyrilis pushed into the room and I followed behind her, shooting at a stormtrooper over her shoulder. It coughed, spewing bile into the air. Lyrilis flinched, covering her mouth and nose with her hand. The stormtrooper ran for her, his hands reaching for her neck.

Gordon stepped in front of us, swinging his axe one-handed at the stormtrooper, sending it falling backward, sliced in half. The top half of the stormtrooper, bisected at his waist, continued to crawl towards us, clawing at the ground like it didn’t know it should’ve been dead. Gordon backed us up to the wall. “It shouldn’t be alive,” he whispered, his beady eyes wide.

Lyrilis, nearly pressed against me, reached her hand towards the wriggling stormtrooper. Her body heat rose in temperature rapidly, hot enough to dry the skin on my lips. If I touched her shoulder, I’m certain my glove would’ve burned. The stormtrooper erupted into flames. It cried out, the smell of melting plastoid filling the barracks. The stormtrooper stopped moving.

I moved out from behind Lyrilis and Gordon, aiming my blaster at the nearest stormtrooper as it flung Fry across the room, the droid’s legs snapping off. I shot the stormtrooper between its armor, the red energy sinking into its chest. The stormtrooper screeched as Hubri brought the stock of her crossbow down on its neck. It fell to the floor.

The final stormtrooper stared down at Lyrilis. I felt anger coming from her as she held her pike in front of her. She charged forward at it, her jacket trailing behind her. The stormtrooper spoke through his helmet, whispering words not in Basic or any language I could identify. Lyrilis stopped in her tracks, her anger giving way to a gripping fear, seemingly entranced by its words. “Mnggal-Mnggal,” Gordon whispered.

The stormtrooper leaped at her. I shot at it, my bolt landing. The stormtrooper collapsed at her feet with a heavy _thud_. Lyrilis turned to look at us, her face plastered in fear. Her hands shook around her pike. She extinguished its blade and let out a labored breath.

Gordon gathered up Fry’s parts, slinging his pieces onto his back. “Missed all the action,” Gordon grumbled.

I walked to Lyrilis and whispered, “Did you understand that thing?”

She shook her head. “No,” she whispered back. “But it was… horrifying.” I put a hand on her shoulder, avoiding looking at her. I was never the best with comforting words. She didn’t shrug my hand away. “We need to get to that reactor,” she whispered, her hands still shaking. Lyrilis turned to the back wall of the barracks, facing the door opposite from where we came. My hand fell from its place on her. “Let’s go,” she called. “This way.”

Just as quickly as she fell apart, she put herself back together. We followed her as if nothing happened--a quiet suppression that would need addressing at some point, if we ever dared to--down into another stretch of maintenance tunnels. The red strobing light greeted us again, this shaft less populated with corpses.

We climbed up another ladder and into a small room with an attached airlock. Two enviro-suits hung by the airlock. Lyrilis immediately grabbed for one of the silver suits. “This is my plan. I’ll carry this out,” she said, resolute. “Who else wants to come?”

I opened my mouth to say something--I wasn’t even sure what it would be yet--when Gordon raised his hand. He shrugged Fry off his back and set him on the ground next to him. “I’ll go.”

Hubri let out an amused huff. “Will the enviro-suit even fit you?”

Gordon grabbed the suit. “Seems pretty big,” he remarked.

Lyrilis pulled the suit on over her clothes and jacket. “Hubri, you stand guard,” she ordered. “Meena, get Fry working again. We’ll keep our comms open.” She put the bulbous helmet over her head and spoke into her comm. “Captain Adrian, we’ve got an update.”

“Wyverns, good. Do you have a plan? We’re about out of ideas over here,” the captain replied.

 “We’re going to crash this ship,” Lyrilis said.

“I--” The captain sounded baffled. “Repeat that, Vann.”

“We’re going to blow the reactor,” Lyrilis explained, stoicism keeping her voice flat. “Should turn off all systems. Repulsor lifts will fail. Life support should keep going long enough to get us planetside.”

There was a small chuckle on the comm. Nervous. “You’re certain this is your best option?”

“It should kill the disease on board.”

Captain Adrian sighed. “Yes, but it would…” There was a pause. “Alright. May the Force be with you, Wyvern Squadron.”

Lyrilis opened the door to the airlock. She turned around to Hubri and I and gave a small, sad smile as she waved to us. “Be back soon,” she said.

I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t find any words. Nothing seemed appropriate for the situation we found ourselves in. I just waved back.

Lyrilis disappeared into the airlock, Gordon following behind her. I heard the hissing sound of air pressurizing and I knew they’d made it onto the hull of the Star Destroyer.

I sat down next to Fry’s parts, my stomach turning with anxiety. My hands shook slightly as I sorted through Fry’s systems and servos. He was mostly intact, so I couldn’t out why he’d powered down from his legs breaking. _Must’ve tripped some failsafe,_ I thought. I reset him and waited for him to boot up.

“We’ve reached the reactor door,” Lyrilis reported over the comm.

Hubri, peering down the ladder we came from, pressed her comm in her ear. “Hurry up, I’m getting antsy.”

Fry’s eyes began to glow before promptly turning back off. I sighed in frustration. I could barely see the work in front of me--I was too anxious for my mind to focus on anything. The inorganic nature of Fry only made focusing on him that much harder.

A long, droning siren played overhead, piercing through the silence. My body felt like it left my skin as I jumped at the sudden noise.

“We activated a controlled reactor meltdown!” Lyrilis called, urgency in her voice. “We’re coming back! Be prepared to run the second we’re back!”

I shot up off the ground, gathering Fry’s pieces for Gordon to scoop up. The airlock opened and the two ripped the anti-environment helmets from themselves, discarding them without care. Lyrilis’s normally messy hair was even more of a tangle of purple and dark roots as she ran past as for the ladder. “Hurry! We’re heading back to those barracks. It’s central enough that we might survive this!”

We ran through the tight, winding maintenance shaft. The tunnel felt longer now that we hurried through it. The siren was muffled as we stepped over bodies and slid through pipes, but the red glow seemed brighter than before.

We hurried up a ladder and ran for the barracks. The ship shook as the door slid open to the room and a loud explosion rang through the ship.

“Here it goes,” Lyrilis said. A disorienting screeching, metallic and gut-wrenching, echoed through the ship. The door to the barracks slid closed and we all got low to the ground. Slowly, the floor began slanting. The beds all began creaking towards the wall. Lyrilis jammed her pike into the ground, lodging the shaft into the newly-made hole. I tried to grab hold of a pipe on the wall, the fixture barely escaping my fingers as a sudden jolt sent me backward.

The angle of the slant increased and I found myself sliding until my back laid against the wall.

“We’re being taken in by the planet’s gravity, captain!” Hubri yelled into her comlink over the roar of falling.

“We saw the explosion,” Captain Adrian confirmed. “We’ll see you planetside, rebels.”

I hoped he was right.

The room began to heat up and the slow roar of sound was the only indication that we were moving. Ship crashes are not the instantaneous falling and subsequent explosion that is seen in action movies. It’s slow. Painstakingly slow as you wait for something, anything to indicate to you again that something was even happening. Each minute was a miniature eternity I had to live through, waiting to see if I’d live to see the next eternity.

I found my body prone against the wall, which had now become the floor, as the ship found its position into a nosedive. It was almost peaceful. As I laid there, I began to feel my exhaustion in my muscles. I contemplated falling asleep--being unconscious for the impact seemed better than the alternative--but the adrenaline in my body would have never let me.

The temperature continued to rise as the ship fell through the upper atmosphere of Dathomir, and a sudden, violent lurch threw me from my position against the wall before I settled back where I was, stuck on my side this time. We hit the bulk of the atmosphere. The ship rattled and shook, the legs of the bunk beds hitting against the wall too close to my head for comfort. I couldn’t move. My mind was too on edge to focus on the Force. I couldn’t even sense much beyond my fingers. The temperature continued to rise as sweat beaded over my skin and under my clothes, wetting my eye covering around the edges and on the bridge of my nose. I began to worry that we would die from combustion before we even reached the ground.

The sound of crumpling metal shrieked through the air and another horrible lurch sent me flying once again. As I fell back down to the wall, a dull _thud_ rang in my head. My vision went black as my head collided with the leg of one of the bunks, the pain not even registering in my nerves before consciousness failed me.

 

* * *

 

A dark figure stood in front of me, facing away from me. It was large and featureless, more a shadow than anything. I could smell blood, though I didn’t know where it was coming from. I stared at the figure, waiting for something, anything, for an incomprehensible amount of time--simultaneously both mere minutes and long, stretching days, like I was still falling from space.

 

* * *

 

I woke up with a start, my nagging muscles protesting the jolt of consciousness. My head roared with a disorienting ache. I could barely focus on the dark room around me. 

I checked my surroundings. The floor was the floor again, bunk beds sprawled around it in various states of rest. Fry’s head sat close to me. Lyrilis was across the room, lying peacefully on her side, her hand still loosely gripped around the hilt of her upright pike. Gordon was sprawled out, his arm pining Hubri in her place. They were all alive.

I moved on to checking my body. Aside from the aching, I had a scabbed-over gash on my arm, dried blood around the cut, and a large bump on my head. I could feel bruises over my legs and torso. The burn from the Inquisitor’s blade was still pink, but painless, likely thanks to Sil. There was a sharp pain in my chest that I hoped wasn’t a broken rib.

“Y’all awake now?”

I jumped at the question. Fry’s eyes weren’t lit up--I’d assumed he was still broken. I sat upright and rubbed my stiff neck. “How long have we been out?” I asked, my voice raspy.

“Thirty-five hours and seventeen minutes,” Fry reported. “Meanwhile, I’ve been waitin’. Sittin’. Watchin’, while y’all got your beauty rest.”

Hubri stirred, groaning. Her eyes flitted open, bright yellow in the dark. “Gordon,” she pushed him. “You’re crushing me.” Gordon let out a loud groan. Hubri sighed and lifted the arm off her, moving from underneath it.

Lyrilis rolled over onto her back. “I feel like hell.”

“I want out of here,” Hubri complained, standing up with the help of a nearby bunk. “I want off this planet.”

“Ya just got here, partner,” Fry spoke up.

“Someone wake Gordon up,” I said, getting to my feet. The bruises on my legs protested my weight. “We should figure out where to go from here.”

Lyrilis stood up, leaning a little on her pike. “Should get to the bridge. Good vantage point and we might be able to get a decent signal off-planet from there.” Lyrilis turned to me. “You can hotwire a Star Destroyer, right?”

I gave an amused chuckle, the movement rattling my ribs painfully. “Doubtful, but I can try.”

“I could if someone reassembled me,” Fry called.

“I like you better like this,” Hubri joked. She nudged Gordon a bit harder than was needed.

“Ugh,” he moaned. “Are we on Dathomir?”

“Unfortunately,” Hubri confirmed.

Gordon stood up a great effort. He moved his shoulder to grab his axe lying in front of him, forgetting about his missing limb. “Oh yeah,” he said.

“Can you carry Fry?” Lyrilis asked him. “We can repair him later.”

“‘Ey there, sheriff!” Fry called. “I should be put back together now. Can’t shoot in this state.”

Gordon looked to Fry’s strewn about pieces. “Yeah, I can carry him.”

 

We took the elevator to the bridge, something still powering it, though barely as the light flickered. The elevator came to an abrupt stop, the light staying on.

“It’s not the power supply,” Lyrilis said, looking at the ceiling. She ignited her saber and cut out a hole in the ceiling of the elevator, pushing out the separated chunk with the Force. Bright daylight filled the elevator. She jumped up into the outside. “Uh, guys,” she called down. “Get up here.”

I grabbed the melted edge of the hole and hoisted myself up. Hubri effortlessly floated up. “I can’t fit,” Gordon called. He took Fry’s head from his back and placed it at the edge of the hole so he could see.

The sight around me was disorienting. A crimson jungle stretched out on all sides, dense enough to block the ground from our sight, save for the scar of toppled trees and upturned soil behind the Star Destroyer. The red sun was low in the sky, likely late afternoon.

“The bridge is missing,” Lyrilis said. “Must’ve broken in half and fallen somewhere else.”

I looked down the dizzying height below us. “If the elevator is broken, how do we get down?”

Lyrilis plunged her saber blade into the elevator again, cutting a much wider hole. “Scale the side. Not much else we can do.” She pulled the new cutout up and threw it down the broken side of the ship. Gordon pulled his way up, reclaiming Fry’s head.

Carefully, we climbed down the side of the Star Destroyer, gripping onto outcropping and walking across narrow tubing. I tried not to look down. My shoulders screamed from the exertion, my hands red and the skin raw by the time my feet had dirt beneath them again.

The sun began to set over the trees. “We shouldn’t travel at night,” Hubri said. “There’s a reason these jungles are sparsely populated.” 

“We stay here for the night then,” Lyrilis declared. “The Star Destroyer provides enough cover.”

We settled under the overcropping of the ship, staring at the crimson sky lit on fire by the red sun. The light settled on the leaves of the trees, fuschia and turquoise. I couldn’t tell if they were changing color for the season or if they varied so heavily by nature. The dirt beneath us was a clay-red. If I thought too long about the color, the smell of cool soil would mingle with the acrid, metallic scent of blood.

I repaired Fry next to the fire Gordon set up. The droid nagged the whole time. “No, use that screw on my chassis.”

I continued twisting the screw into his arm. “Doesn’t matter. All your screws are the same. You were manufactured for easy repair with stock pieces.”

“I was _created_ for keepin’ order ‘round this galaxy,” Fry retorted. The second his arm was functional, he snatched the tools from my hands. “I’ll finish this. You scoot along.”

I got up and dusted the dirt from my pants. “Good, I’m tired.”

“Ya slept for two days.”

I stretched my legs, shaking the numbness from them. “Wasn’t good sleep.” I walked over to a fallen tree a few meters away, Lyrilis sitting on top of it, watching the treeline.

“Oh, Meena,” she said, looking up at me. Her hair was a mess. Her face was too, a large bruise on her cheek giving a sickly color to her pale skin, though I was sure I looked worse than she did. She rummaged through her large jacket pocket and pulled out her medical kit. “You should bandage up.”

I sat down next to her. “I’m okay,” I replied. She opened the kit and pulled out a disinfectant and a rag. She took my arm in her hand, the touch surprising me. She applied the cold disinfectant on the gash on my arm. “It’s already closed,” I protested. “Won’t do much.”

“Still better than nothing,” she argued, holding my arm firm. She continued on, applying the rag to any scrap or cut she could find over my arms. I insisted I clean the cut on my face--I wanted to save myself the embarrassment. “I just don’t want anything to happen to you,” she whispered as I handed her back the rag. She didn’t look at me. “I hated this plan. I didn’t know what I would do if something happened to you.” She paused long enough for me to feel my stomach knot. “Or the others,” she added.

I lowered my head, looking down at the same dirt she did. “Yeah,” I replied, too tired and too nervous to think of anything more to say. I finally looked to her, the moon rising over the trees above her. Pale, silver light cast a glow over her. I ran my thumb over my arm where she’d held it.  “I understand that.”


	16. The Red Hills

I woke to the whirring of airspeeders overhead. I reached for the blaster near my hand in the dirt, aiming it at the sky, where I heard the sound. A final speeder sped over us in the red sky, above the canopy of trees. It didn’t look Imperial, but speeders were too ubiquitous to tell for sure.

Being awake brought back the soreness and pain to my mind. The movement of grabbing my blaster caught up to me and the expected pain followed. I lowered the weapon and placed it on the ground, releasing the muscles with relief. I examined my body for damage once again, this time with the hope of fading bruises and healing scabs. A small trickle of blood fell from the wound Lyrilis bandaged and the metallic tang of blood filled the air. The sudden motion seemed to have reopened it.

Hubri was already awake, watching the treeline. She looked over at me. “They’ve flown over a few times now,” she said. “Not Imperial, not witches.”

Lyrilis stirred next to me, turning on her side to face me and pulling her oversized jacket tighter around her. Her eye covering had slid down her nose in her sleep, revealing thick, dark eyebrows that matched the roots of her hair. “What was that noise?” she asked, her words slurred from sleep.

“Speeders,” I replied.

She jerked awake, looking at me. “Speeders?”

“They’re not Imperial.”

She relaxed a moment before sitting upright, dusting the red dirt from her jacket. “Could be from the _Resurgence_.”

Hubri scoffed. “I doubt it. They’re probably going to leave us here until we’re useful again.” She looked back to the trees, her hands running through her strip of long, white hair before pulling it into its tight bun. “Fry turned himself off last night, despite his offer to keep watch.”

Lyrilis stood up and stretched upwards. “You didn’t turn him back on?”

“I’ve been enjoying the quiet.”

Gordon woke up and I switched Fry back on. We gathered up our few things and got ready to head off through the forest. “We should follow the debris and hope it leads us to the bridge,” Lyrilis suggested, “but, Hubri, you know this planet better than me. Any ideas?”

“My clan never ventured into the forests like most of the other witches,” Hubri explained. The yellow of her eyes seemed more intense than I’d seen them before. “I’ll be as blind as you all. We should follow your plan.”

Coincidentally, the trail of debris followed the flight path of the speeders. I began to hope that our guess about them not being Imperial was right. The speeders had no Imperial markings and their passengers weren’t in any discernible uniform, but it was hard to tell from that distance.

Our first steps into the Dathomiri jungle were beautiful. The leaves of the trees were an opalescent teal against the crimson bark of the trees, though I couldn’t tell if the color was natural or if it came from the tinted light of the sun. I didn’t sense much animal life around us, but flora sprung up around us in abundance. Every few meters, we’d find some part of the Star Destroyer, anything from a small scrap of hull to a huge radio disk.

Another speeder flew overhead.

“You said that some witches live in this forest?” I asked. “Like, Nightsisters?”

Hubri let out a sound of annoyance. “You outsiders only know about the Nightsisters because they are the extremists. There are more witches than just them. My clan is--” she paused for a moment. “My clan was nothing like them.”

“Oh,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“Anyways,” Hubri changed the subject, “yes, some witch clans have made homes in the forests, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone living here. If we’re on the continent I think we’re on, then there shouldn’t be.”

Her expression was stern as we walked, her face never relaxing. I could feel her senses on high, more than I’d ever felt from her. Either she was anxious or the planet was lending her its power as one of its own. I didn’t know if that was a myth or not, but Hubri didn’t seem to be in the mood to demystify how Dathomiri magick worked.

We walked another half a kilometer into the forest, passing more chunks of grey debris, more communication disks and pieces of turbolaser cannons. Occasionally, a crumpled TIE fighter would be stuck in the dirt. “Really did a number on that Star Destroyer,” Gordon remarked.

“Better than leaving it to fester up there,” Lyrilis said. “Imagine if someone else found that.”

“I reckon they woulda perished,” Fry argued. “That ship was a rough ‘n tumble place. We barely got out all in one piece.”

Gordon glanced over to Fry.

“Well, most of us.”

“Shh,” Lyrilis hushed him, her finger pressing her comm closer to her ear.

I listened to the comm in my own ear. A quiet roar came over the _Resurgence_ ’s frequency. I tried not to get my hopes up as I listened further. A trio of airspeeders flew overhead.

“-ern Squadron. I repeat, come in Wyvern Squadron.”

Our faces light up--for Fry, quite literally. “Yes!” Lyrilis exclaimed into her comm. “This is Wyvern Squadron! Do you read me?”

The voice on the other end sounded surprised. “By the stars, you’re alive!”

“Yes, we’re all alive,” Lyrilis repeated. “We’re all okay down here.”

I let out a laugh. I couldn’t help myself. I was relieved--overjoyed. Worry melted from my mind. I could already feel the warmth of a long shower and my bed once we were back on the _Resurgence_.

“We’re confirming your location, Wyvern Squadron. Once we do, we’ll send a dropship. In the meantime, stay put,” the rebel voice ordered.

“Roger that,” Lyrilis replied, smiling.

 

We waited in anticipation for only a few minutes before a small transport ship descended through the canopy of leaves, finding a tight spot to land amongst the gnarled trees and flowering bushes. The bay door opened and a disembarking ramp slid down. Captain Adrian strode out, a smile on his face as he approached us. “Wyvern Squadron, you all have more luck than you have any business having,” he joked.

“We’re hard varmints to kill,” Fry replied.

Captain Adrian laughed. “That continues to be the case.” He glanced over all of us for a moment before settling on Gordon. His brow furrowed. “What the hell happened to your arm?”

“Traded it to be cured of the disease,” Gordon explained. “Made a deal with some creature. Mnggal-Mnggal.”

The name sent a horrible feeling down my back, like a premonition of something I wasn’t aware of. More than anything, I still didn’t understand Gordon’s explanation.

“Mnggal… Mnggal?” Captain Adrian repeated. Another feeling of dread settled in me. “A creature?” Gordon nodded. “Then I will tell our troops to scavenge with caution.”

“They should be cautious already,” Hubri interjected. “If they should be scavenging at all.”

“Don’t worry, they’re already picking around the wreckage in full protective gear,” the captain explained. “Now, Gordon, you will be sent back to the _Resurgence_. The rest of you, are you fit to carry out your mission on Dathomir?”

I silently cursed. I forgot we had a mission down here. The warm feeling of curling up in bed became a little more distant. I prepared to argue that we were in no shape to investigate Sith activity when Gordon spoke up, “Sir, I will stay with them for the mission.”

Captain Adrian looked at him with bewilderment. “You’re missing an arm, Wyvern.”

“I only need one to swing my axe,” he argued, “and I need to protect them.”

Captain Adrian was silent for a moment. “Let us provide some basic exams before I agree. We’ve set up a forward camp on the edge of the forest. We have supplies and fresh clothes.” He gestured to the ship before walking back up the ramp.

We followed him up into the dropship. I was quite enticed by the offer of fresh clothes. I was getting increasingly tired of walking around in dirty, soiled clothing covered in sickness and sweat.

“Well I’ll be damned,” a familiar voice called from the co-pilot’s seat of the ship. “You’re all the Wyvern Squadron that’s been causing a fuss?”

I looked to the source of the voice. Salak sat in the seat, his red eyes wide. “Salak!” I exclaimed.

“Of course it was you all that took out that Star Destroyer,” he laughed, smiling. I guess he hadn’t received full details on the rescue mission.

“You know us,” Lyrilis laughed. “We know how to make a mess.”

Gordon pushed through us and approached Salak. “Salak, my friend,” he said. His voice wobbled more than usual.

Salak stood up and put a hand on Gordon’s good shoulder. “Again, I see,” he replied, his eyes gesturing to Gordon’s missing arm.

“Ah, well,” Gordon began. “I was just thinking I could get a matching set.”

The ramp to the dropship raised. “Everyone take a seat,” the captain announced from the pilot’s seat. “We can catch up at the forward camp.”

The camp was located just at the edge of the forest, nestled onto a patch of grasslands made of golden, dry planets that baked in the heat of the red sun. A few tents were erected in the clearing with transport ships and a handful of starfighters lined up a little further out in the grass. Pilots sat around on crates, staring and whispering as we walked to the main tent.

“A bit obvious of a camp with all this activity,” Lyrilis commented.

“It’s a risk,” the captain agreed, “but we would rather be out of the way of any natives than well-hidden. That Star Destroyer going down certainly won’t go unnoticed, but we should be off-planet by the time the Empire gets their bureaucracy set up to come and investigate.”

“Let’s hope that’s the case,” Hubri replied, her voice low.

We gathered in the tent, the synthweave canvas trapping in the heat. I was already sweating in my new, stiff blue collared shirt that matched the rest of the Rebellion soldiers. I stubbornly kept my jacket over it, despite a dried splattering of blood that colored the right shoulder.

“To start, I must raise a concern about your methods aboard the Star Destroyer,” the captain began. “I worry that by landing the diseased ship here, you may have contaminated the planet, which complicates our mission here, not to mention the ecological dangers that it could wreck.”

“It was our only choice,” Lyrilis spoke up. “We would’ve died--”

“I do not debate that, Vann.” The captain’s voice was stern. “But I debate the potential consequences your choice may have. I bring this up to caution you.”

I lowered my head. He was right, but I didn’t care to say anything.

“Second,” the captain’s tone was less stern, but it retained its business-like air. “We believe we have pinpointed the source of Sith activity our agents previously reported. To the east of here, towards Nightsister territory. Unfortunately, we have no other information beyond this. We must find out what this is. If it’s an artifact like on Korriban then we must recover it before the Empire can find it.”

My eyebrows wrinkled together. “What does the Empire want with relics of some ancient, evil religion?”

Lyrilis looked down, gripping her pike. “Rumor has it,” her voice was low, “the Emperor is one. That he was the Sith the Jedi Order was trying to track down.”

I shook my head. “I was always told as a kid that the Sith were long gone.”

“Crippled and in hiding,” Lyrilis said, “but never gone. That was the story at least.”

Hubri shifted her weight and adjusted the crossbow on her back. “Captain, you’re telling me that we are supposed to head east--toward Nightsister territory--and just hope to stumble upon a Sith relic?”

“It could be a relic,” Captain Adrian explained, “or a temple, or anything. We don’t know.”

“Even better,” Hubri whispered, crossing her arms.

Captain Adrian’s eyes rested on Salak, standing between him and us. He wore a military uniform, matching the other soldiers, and now me. “Salak will accompany you all. He’s been cleared to rejoin you all as a part of Wyvern Squadron.”

Salak gave a smile and clapped Gordon on the back. “Glad to be back.”

“Set out when you’re ready,” the captain ended.

 

We set out before noon local time, the sun not quite at the zenith of its arc through the sky. Eastward lead us back into the forest, though I knew from our flight to the camp that we would only pass through a narrow strait of trees before trekking over plains.

The forest was denser, however. The same trees and bushes grew in this stretch of forest, only closer together. I got a feeling in my stomach of being watched, though I couldn’t sense any lifeforms. _Just paranoid_ , I thought to myself.

Just then, I sensed movement. “Everyone, stop,” I whispered.

I sensed three Force-sensitives, hidden in the bushes around us. Witches of Dathomir, I figured. I didn’t know much about these Force-users--and what I did know, I doubted its accuracy. I looked at Hubri. She already had her bowcaster in her hands.

A warrior’s cry pierced the air and I sensed the movement behind us before I could hear the sharp _clank!_ of metal hitting metal. I whipped around, my blaster aimed in front of me at the source of the noise.

Three women, clad in red and green robes, stood behind Fry. He was doubled over, his arm limp in front of him. He had a sizable dent in the back of his head, made by one of the metal staves held by the Witches. He sputtered out a string of binary, accented by curses in a number of languages.

“Trespassers,” the middle one spoke in a rhythmic accent, “does this broken droid speak for you?”

Hubri stood with her shoulders back. “Absolutely not.”

The Witch narrowed her eyes at Hubri, looking her up and down. “Did you bring the scourge from the stars?”

“The Star Destroyer?” I asked. The Witch nodded, curt.

“We weren’t on that ship for long,” Lyrilis spoke up. “We had nothing to do with what was made there.”

The Witches were silent for a moment, staring at us. “Come with us,” the center Witch declared. “If you refuse, we will hunt you.” The two other Witches produced blindfolds from their robes. “Force-seers,” she addressed Lyrilis and me, “blind yourself to the way to our home.”

I stifled a chuckle. I would not be complying with that request.

The Witches led us through the forest, all of us now blindfolded, though not all of us blind. We were continuing eastward, at least. We were not losing ground with this detour. 

The forest broke and vast grassland stretched before us; fields with taupe grass almost to my knees and dotted with tiny white and red flowers. We hiked for another hour or so before cresting a hill and finding ourselves staring down on a settlement made of white canvas tents and more permanent mud-brick buildings. We descended into the village, quietly bustling with primarily human women, all dressed in similar colors and robes to the women that led us through the streets. A rancor roared in the settlement’s square, being handled by several men--human and Zabrak--dressed in horrid rags and rattling chains. Slaves.

We were lead into a large tent in the seeming center of the village. Two women stood outside the flap entrance of the tent, their robes matching those of the women that lead us. They wore the same stern expression and held the same metal staff.

Inside, the tent was rather bare for its size. In the middle, however, sat a woman, frail and wrinkled with her old, old age. Her robes were the most elaborate I’d seen so far, made of more than the two or three layers our captors wore. With a hypnotic rhythm, the woman passed grains of rice from one hand to the other and back again, every grain landing perfect in her cupped hand.

“Who have you brought me today, Kira?” the woman croaked out, the rice clattering into her open palm again.

“Starfallers, my priestess,” replied the one I presumed to be Kira. The two other Witches untied the blindfolds on the others. Kira turned to us and her voice dropped. “Sit down, all of you.”

We complied, sitting down cross-legged, as the woman in front of us was. Hubri’s eyes were wide as she stared at the woman in front of her. “High Priestess--” she started.

“I knew you’d return,” the priestess accused. The rice laid still in her hand as she used the other jab a bony finger at Hubri. “I always knew it. Cowards always return.”

Hubri opened her mouth to protest. “But I--”

The priestess turned to Lyrilis and I. “You, Force-seers.” I felt my spine straighten without my control. “You wield the Force like it’s a toy. I thought your people held more respect for it.” She looked over the rest of us and moved the rice a bit more. “Droid,” she said.

Fry looked up. He was the only one not cross-legged. His limbs weren’t built for articulation like that. “Howdy, ma’am.”

“You wish to be organic.” Her beady eyes narrowed at him

Fry nodded. “It would be an honor.”

The woman cackled, clearly amused. “Hmm. Quaint. A droid that thinks it can feel. You will never be organic.” She turned to Gordon and Salak. “There’s a history between you two.”

Gordon nodded. “Business partners.”

“You’re reliant on each other. You should break that off.” She began pouring the rice from one hand to the other again. She made a final sweep of us, her eyes once again landed on me. “Why did you quit your job?”

My eyebrows knit together. I feared how she knew about my past. “I never liked the work. I found something better to do with my life.”

“You wander. You’re not one to settle down,” she mused. “I wish any lovers you have luck.” I pursed, not sure of how to respond, or if I should. She turned to Lyrilis. “Your friend in your pocket.”

Lyrilis sat straight, in the same posture I’d seen her use in meditation before. “What about him?” she asked.

“Are you sure you can trust him?”

Lyrilis gave a short nod. “He was a Jedi Master.”

“Yet you do not know his full name.”

“His name is Sil,” Lyrilis responded, unphased.

“Hmm,” the High Priestess hummed, amused. “His true name is Silard. It seems he does not trust you.” She paused. “Have you seen the dead that surround you?”

Lyrilis inhaled sharply and lowered her head. “I carry them with me every day.”

The tent fell silent, except for the sound of rice falling onto rice. “Now,” she concluded, tired of her tirade of psychological warfare, “The Force told me of your arrival.” Her voice was a little quieter, but carried all the same mischief. “It’s a good day to fulfill a prophecy, Starfallers. Hubri, would you care to recite it?”

Hubri sighed. “Warriors will fall from the sky and bring with them the apocalypse. They will bring with them a ship, a plague, and a monster. It will end our way of life.” Her words had rhythm, as if she were reciting a poem from memory. She looked to us. “It’s an old prophecy of the Witches of the Red Hills Clan.”

“Mmm,” the High Priestess agreed. “Older than me. Older than my High Priestess.” She looked to Hubri. “Good to see you haven’t forgotten your people completely, coward.” Hubri bristled at the insult but remained silent. “There is a way to reverse the scourge. Find the relic in the Valley of the Ancestors. With that, we can defeat the plague of Mnggal-Mnggal.”

“You mentioned a monster?” Lyrilis asked. “Is that Mnggal-Mnggal?”

“Oh no,” the High Priestess said. “The monster is different. Inevitable. Do not concern yourself with it yet. For now, reach out to the relic. You should feel it. Let it guide you.”

I centered my mind, reaching out beyond the tent for... A relic, I guess. I wasn’t sure what to sense for, but I felt a flash of discomforted anxiety when I realized I couldn’t sense beyond the tent. I could only see within the canvas that surrounded us.

The High Priestess cackled. “Not yet. You lot are impatient ones.”

The rice fell through her hand, falling softly onto the mat beneath her. Her form shimmered and disappeared into vapor, spiraling into the air. Gordon recoiled at the sight.

Hubri sighed. “She loves the drama of that.”

My sense beyond the tent returned to me, as if the Priestess had been stifling our vision. Sure enough, far in the distance, I sensed something sticking out in the Force. An object in my periphery.

“I guess we have another new mission, huh?” Gordon said.

Hubri stood up and dusted off her pants. “It’s better to just go along with her antics. We should hurry. I don’t want to owe her anything for too long.”


	17. Burn Marks

The air turned musky as thick-trunked trees began to dot the grasslands, their branches stretching into the air in jagged patterns. The trees were still sparse, but their scent was strong in the stagnant, dry air. The terrain was easy to hike over--the hills grew flatter and flatter and the grass began to thin out.

Coincidentally--or suspiciously--the relic lead us eastward as we followed our general sense for it. Kira and her fellow Witches let us go without them, apparently an order from the High Priestess, meaning we marched alone. There was nothing to stop us from running from the Witches’ mission aside from the threat of prophecy, which Hubri seemed insistent about.

A small clump of trees loomed in front of us, still several kilometers away, as the sun began to set behind us. The relic was still just a nagging sense, far off in the distance. “Hubri,” Lyrilis called as we hiked towards the trees, “do you know what the terrain is like beyond this?”

“No,” Hubri responded, though I sensed an air of dishonesty in her words. “I never made it out this way. Beyond that is Nightsister territory.”

“An even better reason to stop then,” Lyrilis said. “We should rest for the night.”

We made it to the trees, thinner and worse-looking than the previous ones, though they didn’t smell nearly as strong. A pond sat nestled between some bushes and a tree just ahead of us. Three large, bovine beasts drank from the pond and grazed on the dry grass. They were far away, though we didn’t fancy them getting any closer while we slept.

We set up a meager camp--really just bedrolls and a small fire Lyrilis set. I stared up at the sky, watching the two moons rise over the hills in the distance and drag the stars along with them. “Think you could’ve seen that Star Destroyer from all the way down here?” Gordon asked me, looking up.

“Probably,” I said. “During the Clone Wars, you couldn’t go a day on Coruscant without there being three or four battleships hanging over your head.”

Lyrilis nodded. “It was worse near the Temple.” She said the word like I did, in an accent buried beneath the air she put on.

“I didn’t live far from it,” I said. “I remember watching the clone transports pass overhead from my housing block in Luka Town.”

Lyrilis turned to Salak and Gordon. “So Meena and I are from Coruscant, Hubri is from here, and Fry…” she glanced over to Fry, watching the beasts from the bushes, “… is Fry. What about you two?”

Salak looked at the fire in front of us. “I’m from Csilla,” he replied. “The planet isn’t a myth. Nor is the Chiss Ascendency. Despite the secrecy, I know some people out here know about it, though mostly in conspiracy theories.”

Hubri narrowed her eyes. “From the Unknown regions, right?”

Salak nodded. “The Ascendency found some… threat out there. We scientists were studying it, though we never came close to figuring out what it was. Meanwhile, the Republic fell and the Empire was established. The Ascendency made an alliance with the Empire. Suddenly, our research on this threat was ceased. All of us working on that assignment were pushed into do-nothing paper jobs.”

“A cover-up?” I asked. Admittedly, I knew nothing about the Chiss Ascendency he was talking about.

“Don’t know,” Salak sighed. “But I left. I left my job and the Unknown Regions and met Gordon. We started doing mercenary work.”

Lyrilis gave a chuckle. “From scientist to mercenary?”

“There are worse career paths,” Salak laughed.

I looked to Gordon. “So what about you?”

Gordon shrugged. “Nothing much to say. I’m just Gordon.”

“Watch this, partners,” Fry called from a bush a few meters away, interrupting our conversation. He disappeared into the foliage and I heard rustling from the trees down further. As he reemerged, I sensed him faintly near the pond. He scrambled for one of the beasts, startling them. He managed to grab hold of one by its long hair and somehow wrestled onto its back. The beast bucked and grunted in fear, Fry managing to keep hold with his mechanical grip. After a moment or two of the creature’s panicked bucking, which had effectively spooked the other two beasts, the creature calmed down enough for Fry to sit up on it straight and coaxed it towards us.

Gordon applauded Fry’s handling. “How does a droid do that?” he asked.

“Where I’m from, ya never knew if you’ll need to wrangle a critter or two,” Fry replied, looking awfully smug given his fixed expression of servitude.

Hubri scowled. “What the hell does that even mean--”

A bestial scream pierced us from near the pond. Fry’s newly tamed beast bucked upward, Fry barely hanging on. I stood up immediately, pulling the blaster from the holster on my leg. The beasts reemerged from the bushes, charging toward us.

Lyrilis got to her feet, her white blade igniting from the end of her pike. “Do you sense them?” she said.

“I can’t,” Hubri whispered.

She was right. “Like the Star Destroyer,” I said.

Lyrilis threw her hand in front of her, her body heat rising. Fire sparked under the charging beasts, catching on their hair. In the new light, I could see their decaying flesh. Chunks of flesh and hair fell from their haunches as they ran.

Lyrilis and Gordon charged at the creatures, the two of them swinging their weapons down at the beasts, halting them in their places as they squealed in alarmed pain. I fired at the animals, aiming for their skulls when I sensed movement in the bushes again.

Three Witches, robed in green like the ones we were taken captive by, emerged from the bushes and charged at us, staves in hand. Their faces were bloody and placid. Their eyes were glassy and dead.

I refocused my aim at the Witches, my blaster bolts sinking into one. She shrieked in pain, her arms limp beside her and the staff slipping from her fingers. Enraged, she ran for Lyrilis, lifting her arms stiffly. Lyrilis slashed at the Witch with a short movement, barely missing. She stepped forward and slashed again, wider this time, and bisected the Witch at her waist.

Lyrilis let out a yelp as a second Witch locked her arms around her. Lyrilis struggled against the Witch’s grip, trying to maneuver her pike around to cut at the undead woman. I fired at the Witch, my hands shook with the fear of missing and hitting Lyrilis instead.

A scream escaped from Lyrilis as the Witch sank its jaws around Lyrilis’s neck. I cried out in anger and fired my blaster again, hitting the Witch’s skull. I fired again and the Witch fell, releasing its grasp on Lyrilis.

I ran over to Lyrilis, barely in time to catch her fall. “Meena,” she whispered, panicked. “I can’t move my legs.” I lowered her to the ground, unable to support her limp weight.

The blaster fire around us ceased. I reached in my pack for medical equipment, bacta, anything. The bite mark on her neck bled onto the collar of her jacket, covering the gore of the injury. “I--” I tried to speak. I couldn’t find anything to say. I found the medpac I had with me, deep in my pack. I took the bacta and shakily prepped it to apply to her wound. I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d never put bacta on anyone. “I--” I murmured out again.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Lyrilis spoke, her voice growing hoarse. “I can’t see.”

Salak rushed over, kneeling next to me and her. “She was bit?” he asked. I nodded. He examined the wound before standing up. “She’s not losing too much blood for now. Give her a pain reliever,” he instructed. “I’ll be back.”

Salak got up and hurried for the bushes. I found a few pain relievers in the pack, most of them pills. I doubted whether she would be able to take them in her state. I kept looking, deciding on the gel anesthetic. I carefully applied it around the wound with shaky fingers, afraid to get too close to it. She winced as I touched her.

Lyrilis’s breaths came erratically, labored and shallow. I tried to ignore the obvious: she was infected and, like the other infected we saw and fought on the Star Destroyer, she would turn into a mindless monster seeking to infect others. She would be dangerous, like the others. One of us would have to kill her.

I shuddered at the thought. I tried again to push it from my mind, focusing on any signs of life. I watched her chest fall and rise with horrible pain. Her lips quivered like she was trying to speak, but no sound escaped her. Her skin was rapidly losing its color. The Force began to dim inside her.

I couldn’t stand to be the one to kill her.

Salak hurried back over, a bundle of leaves in his hand. He placed them in his mouth and chewed them for a moment before spitting them out. He pressed Lyrilis’s mouth open, her jaw tense. He placed the already-chewed leaves in her mouth. “Chew,” he instructed her.

Something inside her that was still there complied. Her jaw, as stiff and tense as it was, chewed slowly.

“Swallow if you can,” Salak said, spitting out a second dose of leaves.

Her body shuddered with effort. She became stronger in the Force, her presence intensifying. “It’s working,” I gasped.

Her fingers moved, like she was stretching them. Salak pressed the next dose into her mouth. She chewed on her own this time, a lot faster and with more movement. She swallowed the leaves and slowly--very slowly--sat upright, leaning onto me for help. I smiled as the relief set in.

“I--” Lyrilis began. “I thought I was going to die,” she whispered, her voice still rough. “Salak, thank you.”

Salak gave a bashful smirk. “I’m just glad I could help.”

“What was that?” Lyrilis asked. “How did you know--”

“I didn’t,” Salak admitted. “But if I didn’t do something, there would be only one outcome. I thought it was worth a shot.”

“You should bring those plants back to the Rebels,” I said. “It could save lives.”

Salak nodded and lifted a vial stuffed full of leaves. “Already a step ahead.”

Lyrilis turned to me. “Thank you for shooting that Witch,” she whispered. “I messed up. I wasn’t paying attention.”

I shook my head. “Just a mistake.”

“Almost killed me,” she whispered.

We helped her over to the campfire again as she stubbornly limped along on her pike, refusing our direct support. We put out the fire, not wanting to attract any more creatures or Witches while we slept. Hubri announced that she would keep watch and wake one of us in a few hours.

I watched Lyrilis as she fell asleep, making sure of her breathing. Her breaths became long and deep rather quickly. Her body needed to recover. I knew whatever sleep I would get that night would be shallow and horrible, but I waited impatiently for it to take me.

 

I woke to the light of the sun rising red over the hills. A dewy mist formed over everything during the night, wetting my hair and settling on the eye covering over my face.

I jolted upright as my mind replayed the events of the night before. I looked over the Lyrilis, staring at her form. Her chest expanded and slowly released. Her breath rustled the piece of hair that fell over her face.

I relaxed. Gordon sat awake, watching over the horizon. “Good morning,” he said to me.

“Mornin’,” Fry nodded at me.

I nodded back. I looked over the camp. Lyrilis was still resting. Hubri gently snored. “Salak--” I started.

“Salak went back to the Rebel camp,” Gordon sighed. “Those herbs he found, he said he needed to get them back to the Rebels as soon as possible.”

I nodded, taking in the information. “Yes,” I said. “He’s right.” I didn’t figure it was worth voicing my apprehension at his absence. There wasn’t much that could be done about it.

Gordon lifted a vial. “He left some for us. Said Lyrilis should eat some when she wakes.”

Lyrilis and Hubri woke up after a while. We decided to let Lyrilis sleep a bit longer, but she roused not long after I did. “My neck hurts,” she complained as she rolled up her bedroll.

“You got bit,” Hubri replied, already ready to start moving.

“I remember,” Lyrilis mumbled. I handed her another dose of painkillers and the herbs Salak left behind. She gratefully took them. “These taste so much worse than I remember,” she complained, her face scrunching up as she bit into them.

“Let’s hurry,” Hubri urged us. “Seems we’ll cross through some of the Nightsisters’ territory. I don’t want to get caught there after dark.”

We destroyed the remains of the fire, scattering them as best we could. We headed off towards the east, following the quiet nagging of the relic, still far off somewhere beyond the dry, rocky crag that sprawled beyond the edge of the grasslands. Nightsister territory, as Hubri had called it. The rocks were red and menacing, pointing jagged and sharp into the air like teeth.

We started off towards the crag, passing bushes and trees without much variation. Fry rode atop his new beast, walking along slowly beside us and griping that we would be going faster if we all had wrangled our own mount. Personally, I was fine with walking. Speeders were one thing and I would’ve happily taken one if the Rebels had any available, but animals are too unpredictable and dangerous. Machines are logical and only do what you wire them to do--something Fry seemed to defy.

I sensed something in the bushes to our side. People. Familiar people. Lyrilis stopped in her tracks and she unslung the pike from her shoulder. The bushes gave way to a shiny silver protocol droid, a blaster holster strapped around its metal waist.

“Switch?” I asked.

“Here you all are!” the droid exclaimed. “Oh good, good. I thought I was being led on a wild bantha chase.”

The bushes parted again and two people climbed through. A curly caramel-colored ponytail bounced through the leaves as Maya held branches out of the way for Chak’ard to step through. “Hey guys,” she smiled, though she was visibly tired.

“Okay, I lead you to them,” Chak turned to Switch. “May I go now?”

Switch mimed a shushing motion. “You can go when I say so.” Switch turned to us. “Now, I hope you all remember me, yes?”

“Unfortunately,” Hubri sighed.

“You especially,” Switch said, his tone sinister enough to turn his frozen face upwards into a smile. “You owe me a favor, Bubri.”

“Hubri,” she corrected him through clenched teeth. “Hubri Vexru.”

“Miss Vexru, you’re a native here,” Switch continued. “You know this planet well. I’m in search of a relic that will fetch a fancy credit in auction. Since you owe me a debt, you will find and retrieve it for me. I will sell it and you will, of course, receive no compensation.”

Lyrilis stood up straighter at the mention of the relic. “What kind of relic?”

“Ah, glad you asked,” Switch turned to Lyrilis stiffly. “A Sith relic. Been the hub of attention, I believe.”

Lyrilis’s eyebrows knit under her eye covering. “How did you find out about this, too?”

“I’ve been monitoring your comm frequencies. The Alderaanian military’s, yours, Chak’ard’s,” Switch explained. “I understand you all are a set now. Wyvern Squadron, yes?”

Lyrilis gripped her lightsaber tighter. “I don’t owe you anything. This relic would be safer out of your slimy auction houses.” Her voice had its edge back, stronger than last night.

Switch pulled the blaster from his holster. “Would it? Perhaps you’d like to explain.”

Lyrilis watched him intensely. “Do I really have to give a history lesson to a protocol droid--”

A blaster shot fired from Switch’s pistol. I jumped into motion, pulling my own blaster from its holster. I glanced down at the ground where the blaster bolt had sunk into a small rodent, smoking and charred now.

Maya cried out. “Why would you do that? It was just an animal!”

“You should know I have no time nor patience for organics,” Switch responded, coldly jubilant in tone. “It’s better off dead.”

“Now my metallic partner,” Fry spoke up, “I reckon we not shoot innocent critters. It’ll give the livin’ amongst us the wrong idea.”

Switch turned to him, his unblinking photoreceptors staring into Fry. “You’re just a crazy, malfunctioning droid who considers yourself to be one of them. Shameful. Have pride in your parts.”

Silence fell over us. Fry didn’t have anything to quip back with. I glanced over at Chak and Maya, still surprised to see them. They were dressed practically for the environment, both carrying large rifles on their backs. A large bandolier was draped over Maya’s shoulder, probably more suited for someone of Chak’s stature but it didn’t seem to slow her at all.

“Well, let’s get moving,” Switch ordered us, waving his arms stiffly in front of himself.

 

“How’d you end up mixed up with Switch?” Lyrilis asked Chak as we marched towards the crag, up a slow and gradual incline. Hubri had grown silent, her eyes scanning over the land. I couldn’t tell what she was searching for, nor would she say.

Chak sighed. “I know it looks bad. We’ve all got debts in the galaxy. I don’t like this situation any more than you.”

“I’m not doubting you,” Lyrilis reassured him. “Just curious.”

“Curiosity is a bad habit,” he grumbled.

Deaf to Chak’s warning, Lyrilis turned to Maya. “What about you?”

She shrugged, adjusting the rifle on her shoulder. “You saw what it was like for me on Sel Zonn. You get caught up in all kinds of business when you work intel. At some point, business catches up with you.”

“You still working intel?” Gordon asked.

Maya’s face lit up. “Oh, of course! I love this job. It’s an adventure, and more importantly, it’s against the Empire.”

Hubri scowled, walking ahead of the group. “You’ll end up dead if you keep this up.”

Maya laughed. “Not before sending in my last report.”

“Stop,” Hubri ordered. She stood at the crest of the hill, staring down the side of it. I climbed up the top and stood next to her. At the bottom stood what once was a village, similar to the one we were taken to before, but the wood and bricks were blackened. Fabric coverings of tents had been eaten by a long-dead fire.

 

I smelled smoke that wasn’t there before, choking the air and suddenly curling up to block out the sun. Midmorning vanished and the sky turned dark. The village in front of me was bright with the flames that ate at the white canvas tents and charred the mud-brick buildings.

Blaster fire pierced the screams of crying children and terrified people. White-clad troopers, their armor still from the Clone Wars, marched through the streets, surrounding homes and dragging children to the edge of the village. Parents cried out to their children. Others fought back, only to be shot dead. Women in green robes wielded magicks that could only hold off blasterfire for so long.

A Zabrak woman ran from the edge of the village. She was a blur of white hair and red robes as she came up the hill towards me. She stood next to me for a moment, staring down at the village with anger. Tears streamed down her face, down her tattoos.

 

The sun returned. The woman still stood next to me, a few years older. “This was my village,” Hubri whispered, a tear falling down her cheek. Her jaw was squared with the same anger as her bright, yellow eyes scanned over the burnt tent frames and the scorched homes.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered back.

“Hubri--” Lyrilis began.

“The Purge didn’t just hurt you Jedi,” Hubri spat. She stormed down the hill, towards the remains of the village.

Lyrilis looked down at her feet. “There’s so much death here,” she said. “I can feel them.”

Switch looked over the edge of the hill. “Oh, goodness! Abandoned, yes? Perhaps there’s something good around here. I can sell any trinkets I find here, as well.”

“And disturb the site of a massacre?” I asked, my tone sharp.

“Oh,” Switch dismissed, “that’s hardly an issue. Maya, Chak’ard, follow me.” Switch made his way down the hill, following after Hubri into the village. Maya and Chak started down after him.

“Just ignore the dead,” Chak whispered as he brushed past Lyrilis and I. “Don’t let it bother you.”

Lyrilis sat down in the grass, at the top of the hill. “Easy for him to say,” she grumbled.

“I don’t think he meant to ignore what happened,” I said, sitting down next to her.

Lyrilis picked at a dry blade of grass. “Yeah. Still, though.”

A dry breeze rustled the grass around us, dry and yellow and burnt orange in patches. Bright red grains bobbed on the blades of longer grass. Birds sang overhead, resting their wings in a tree halfway between us and the village. There was surprising life there, given the feeling of death that surrounded us.

“I heard there’s a charm needed to open the path to the relic,” Switch barked, leading Maya and Chak to the edge of the village, each one of them carrying a hefty looking chest, “so get looking.”

“How do you know about this?” Lyrilis yelled down the hill.

Switch looked up and waved us down towards him. We stood up from our prickly, grassy seats and walked down to Switch, standing over Chak and Maya, both elbows deep in left-behind belongings. “You’re having them loot families that won’t be coming back, now?” I asked.

Switch straightened his posture, as if he was surprised by my disapproval. “Excuse me, this is a needed step in my becoming filthy rich,” Switch spat. “I heard of this relic and its rituals while downloading data from the HoloNet on the heresy of the Witches who live here.”

Hubri strode over from inside the village. “I’m sorry?” she asked. “Heresy?”

“Well, of course,” Switch replied. “It is well-known that any magical Force user is a threat to the rule of the Empire. The Jedi made that obvious.”

Lyrilis scoffed. “Propaganda.”

Hubri’s eyes widened as she saw Chak and Maya. “What the hell are you all doing? Stop!”

“They are looking for something important,” Switch rebutted.

Hubri crossed her arms. “That stuff doesn’t belong to you. It doesn’t belong to anyone anymore!”

“Never mind,” the protocol droid dismissed. “I’m not here for politics or philosophy, I’m here for a talisman.”

Maya looked up from her chest. “Switch, I don’t see anything mystical in here. I think we should just move on.”

Switch mimicked an exasperated sigh. “Lyrilis Vann, you were a Jedi, correct?”

Lyrilis slipped into her aloof stoicism. “You mean a ‘threat’?”

“Forget I said that. Delete it from your memory,” Switch waved his hands dismissively. “Just use your Jedi powers to find the talisman. It should be here.”

“I owe you nothing.”

Switch turned to me. “Fine, the other blind one then.”

“I’m not blind,” I started, “and I’m not helping you graverob.”

“You two think you’re smart, don’t you?” Switch looked to Chak. “Chak’ard, I know your past.”

Chak stopped sorting through the chest. “I can’t anymore,” he whispered.

“You don’t want to anger me, Chak’ard,” Switch warned. “I still have your daughter, remember?”

Chak’s face twisted in anger as he stared down at the ground. I could sense the emotion in him, strong and tumultuous and, most of all, angry. Shock passed over us as Switch’s admission settled.

“Hubri, just give it over,” Chak spoke, finally.

Hubri’s eyes went wide before narrowing again in anger. “No, it belonged to my mother, it’s mine.”

Switch held out a metal hand. “Give it over, witch.”

Hubri glared at Switch. After a moment, she produced a small piece of dark leather, inlaid with a glittering red stone. It hummed with a primal Force, not unlike the rest of Dathomir. She placed the talisman in Switch’s hand. “You give this back the second we get that relic, understood?”

“You’re not in a position to be making deals, Miss Vexru,” Switch reminded her. “I knew the Zabrak half-blood would be the one to make trouble.”

Hubri made a show of adjusting the crossbow on her back. “I’m pretty good at trouble, droid.”


	18. The Shadow

We followed our senses through a red-dusted canyon in the stretch of crag--Nightsister territory, Hubri called it. Sedimentary layers striped the rocks around us with shades of crimson and pale yellow. Gnarled trees twisted upwards and out, several clinging to the walls of the canyon with their roots embedded in impossible angles.

“Your beast is too loud,” Hubri said to Fry only a few miles into the crevice of land. “We need to leave it behind.”

“She doesn’t mean nothing by her noises,” Fry protested.

“You want her to attract trouble?” Hubri asked. “Then, by all means, you’re taking up the rear and if a Nightsister attacks you, I will not turn around to save you.”

Chak gave Fry an equally annoyed look. “Set the animal free.”

Fry hung his head and got down off his steed. He patted the beast and said some parting words--presumably, since he seemed to just be mirroring the snorts and grunts the animal made. “Go on, girl. Turn on around and leave this place,” he said finally. “I’ll always remember you.” The animal gave him a glassy, unresponsive stare. It trotted over to the nearest patch of dry, thorny grass and gave it a sniff.

Gordon patted Fry on the back of his chassis. “You had to let her go eventually. I’m sure she’ll remember you, too.”

Fry stood up straighter. “You mean that, partner?”

Gordon nodded. “I mean that, partner.”

Switch gave a loud groan. “If we’re done with the drama, we should continue on. All this dust is getting into my circuits. I’m going to need a long oil bath after this.”

“Then maybe you should’ve stayed off my planet,” Hubri spat, walking on ahead of him.

 

We reached the bottom of the canyon, a small stream trickling along our path. Lavender flowers grew in patches next to it--soft compared to the jagged, dark trees that dotted the rocks. Bright, colorful frogs croaked quietly in the water, watching their companions float dead on their backs, their bellies bloated.

Statues lined the canyon at seemingly random intervals. They were all of the same robed woman, her hood over her head but her face visible in many of the statues. In some, she was beautiful and in others, her face was twisted and horrifying. The statues, carved of the same stone that made up the canyon, were all damaged with time--a broken nose on one, a missing finger on her outstretched hands, one’s face was entirely eroded from the wind, leaving the face blank and ominous. “Allya,” Hubri explained after Lyrilis asked. “She was a Jedi until she came here. She unified different tribes of magick users on Dathomir, at least according to my people.”

Contemplating the scenery and geography was more fun than remembering how bad my feet hurt. The backs of my heels were raw and warm, pulsing with inflammation. My boots were far from new and were well broken in, but no pair of shoes were meant for the kilometers we’d crossed over in the past few days. I tried to ignore the few times I felt blood collecting in my socks.

“I hear rancors roam the canyons on this planet,” Maya said. “You guys ever fight a rancor?”

Gordon laughed. “Lost my arm to one years ago.”

Maya’s eyebrows raised in shock. “Is that where that went? I heard that was from the Star Destroyer.”

“Ah,” Gordon replied, sheepish. He lifted his cybernetic arm. “This one, I meant.”

“Oh! Where’d you fight a rancor?” Maya seemed engrossed with Gordon’s arm.

“That’s a long story, I’m afraid,” Gordon explained. “A bet and a gladiator match out in Hutt Space. A story for another time.”

Maya groaned. “C’mon, Gordon! I’m curious now!”

“Another time,” he promised.

* * *

A small structure jutted up out of the banded stone, made from something much smoother and darker. Statues, like the ones that dotted the canyon, flanked each side of the temple, their forms more complete than previous statues we saw. Below us, the Force pulsed with the primal magick of the relic.

“Is this it?” Switch asked. “This must be it.”

“Yes,” Hubri said. “This is it.”

“Good, good!” Switch pulled the talisman out and held it out to Hubri. “That all looks too dangerous for me, so you all will retrieve the treasure for me while I stay out here.” Hubri took the talisman from Switch, swiping it from his hand swiftly.

Fry walked towards Switch. “I’ll stay with him. Make sure he’s up to no trouble.”

“Good idea,” Lyrilis said.

“I protest this!” Switch argued. “I have never been any trouble for you all!”

Fry placed a hand on Switch’s shoulder. “You’re stuck with me, boss.”

Switch shook Fry’s hand off, the motion awkward-looking given Switch’s limited locomotion system. “Get your oily claws off me, service droid, and talk like your vocabulator isn’t broken!”

Hubri approached the temple door, barely taller than she was. She pressed the talisman to the door. In her hand, the red gemstone glowed and vibrated with magick. The Force within Hubri, for just a moment, aligned with the talisman and relic, all resonant with each other. The door slid open, disappearing into the rock beneath us. A rush of cool air passed over us from inside the temple, the smell musty and stale. Without a word or even a moment of hesitation, Hubri disappeared into the darkness beyond the door.

Lyrilis, Gordon, and I shuffled behind her down a narrow, short path sloping downward until we were underground. Hubri was still several paces ahead, walking through the dark. Lyrilis ignited her lightsaber for a light source--more of a gesture for Hubri and Gordon since she and I could see through the dark. As we descended, the relic grew stronger and stronger in the Force--and a feeling of nagging dread I couldn’t shake.

As we reached the bottom, the path opened up into an octagonal room, lit by sconces on each of the eight walls. In the middle, where I expected a relic, stood a figure, turned away from us. He loomed, nearly double my height, with the hood of his all-black robes over his head. A silver lightsaber hung at his side. “I can feel you,” he said. His voice was deep and distorted.

Lyrilis gripped her pike, still ignited. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice braver than mine would’ve been.

“That is none of your concern,” he dismissed. “I know what you’re here for. It is yours. I have no quarrel with petty criminals.”

Lyrilis took a breath. Her hands gave away the fear she suppressed. “I’ll ask again,” she said. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“It is not time for you to know yet.” The Dark side flowed through him as easily as the Force flowed through anyone else, like he was made of it rather than just wielded it. Slowly, he turned around to face us. On his face, he wore a mask, not immediately horrifying, but unsettling. It was cruel and twisted and screamed with the power of the Dark side. His armor was constructed of black tiles hung from his waist and pressed against his chest, the metal reflecting the white glow of Lyrilis’s blade. His entire form was large and imposing, as if he existed merely to take up space but the power within him gave him far more reason for his existence.

In his hand sat a small green-glowing pyramid, dwarfed by the size of his hand. A holocron; I recalled the word Chak used for it, though it didn’t seem as sinister as the one he’d destroyed on Korriban. It echoed the background hum of Dathomir, currently obscured by the presence of the man towering over it.

“Take this,” he said.

Hubri gave a suspicious look. “Why would you give it up so easily?”

“I have no need for toys constructed by primitive tribals,” the figure dismissed. “I am only here to confirm your existence. I have already done that. I need nothing more.” His voice was slow and methodical, the baritone of it echoing around the room.

He stepped forward. My hand readied itself to pull my blaster. He waved his hand and the muscles in my body relaxed without my control. “I want nothing more,” he repeated. He continued forward, the holocron extending out in front of him. He held it out to Hubri, the light casting an emerald glow over her. “This is yours.”

Hubri stared down at it, her face devoid of any expression but shock. Tentatively, she reached out for the holocron and gripped it. She held it close to her body, her head down as if to not look at the figure’s mask staring down at her.

“Now I must go.”

He stepped back to the center of the room. He stood there for just a moment before his form began to melt into black vapor, dissipating throughout the room until nothing remained. I could no longer sense him in the Force, even beyond the temple, as if he had vanished entirely. The dread and anger disappeared.

We were silent for a moment. Hubri cleared her throat, startling me. “So who do we give this to?”

Lyrilis held her hand out, silently asking to see the holocron. Hubri held it firm. Lyrilis gave a short, understanding nod. “It’s between the rebels and the Witches,” she said. “This thing is not ending up in Switch’s hands.”

“I agree,” I spoke up. “The Witches have more claim to it, but I trust the rebels more.”

“It’s not a matter of trust,” Hubri argued. “It’s a matter of life or death on this planet. This must get to the High Priestess.”

“Wouldn’t you rather give it to Switch?” Gordon asked. “You wouldn’t be in his debt if you did that.”

Hubri gave a short, tense laugh. “I don’t care what that droid believes I owe him. This relic must get to the Witches.”

Lyrilis stared at the holocron, thinking. “This is difficult,” she whispered.

“What’s difficult about it?” Hubri asked. “If we give it to the  _ Resurgence _ , it’ll stay safe. But if we give it to the Witches, they can keep the planet, the animals, and all the Witches safe. What remains of them, at least.” Hubri’s eyes widened for a moment, like her own words surprised her. She crossed her arms, wrapping them over the front of her body.

Lyrilis sighed. “If you truly believe this,” she began. “If you truly believe the Witches can use this to combat the plague, then I have no choice.”

“But the rebels--” I started..

“You’ve seen what that disease can do,” Hubri interrupted me. 

I glanced over to Lyrilis, and for a moment, I could see her skin placid and cold again. I pursed my lips, pushing down the emotion that began to rise. “You’re right,” I said, finally. “We give it to the Witches.”

 

The sun was beginning to set by the time we climbed back up to the surface of the planet, leaving behind the uneasy mystery that unfolded in the temple below. The harsh dusk light filtered through the cloud in deep blood red, the light setting the banded rock on fire.

Switch stood in front of us, his silver plating reflecting bright red as he stood with his back to the setting sun in the west. His hand was outstretched towards us. “Hand the artifact over, half-breed.”

Hubri held the holocron closer to her. “No,” she spat.

Switch mimicked a deep sigh from his nonexistent lungs. “Fine then.” He looked to Chak and Maya. “Kill them.”

Fry scrambled over to Switch. “Includin’ me? You shouldn’t punish me for their shenanigans.”

“Kill him first,” Switch ordered Chak.

Silent, Chak took the lightsaber from his belt. The blade came to life, orange and sparking, the blade unable to hold its form. Maya stared at him with wide eyes. “Chak’ard, you can’t be serious?” she gasped.

Lyrilis reached for her own lightsaber. “Chak, please don’t fight us. Don’t make us do this.”

“I’m sorry, everyone,” Chak whispered. “He has my daughter. I’m sure you all understand.” He lifted his blade and pointed it at us.

My hand found my blaster in the moment of hesitation Chak lingered on. There was pain in his eyes--horror behind them. I watched, sensed, waited for something. I aimed the barrel of my blaster at Switch. My heart roared in my ears. I could barely hear over the rush of blood and tension. If I could kill Switch, I thought, then Chak would--

A deafening noise split the sky in half. A shock wave came down from above, knocking us all down and back. With the wall of energy, dirt flew up, whipping down the canyon, bringing with it trees and rocks.

I found myself pinned by the shock wave, my back against the temple with a horrible  _ thud _ . The air vacated my lungs and the dusty wind around me threatened to fill its place. My blaster was no longer in my hands, lost to the cloud of dirt. Through the chaos of everything, in the orange sky sat a Star Destroyer that hadn’t been there before, low in the atmosphere.

Through the dust, Chak stood, illuminated by the orange of his blade, the tip sunk into the rock below him. He pulled the blade from the ground as the dust started to settle. He walked to Switch, knocked over on his back. “Oh, Chak’ard, help me up!” Switch demanded. “Get me off this horrible ground!”

Chak was silent. He pointed his blade at Switch’s polished cranium. The orange blade sparked wildly as dust passed through it.

“Chak’ard,” Switch warned, his cheery voice turning sinister, “turn off your lightsaber and help me up immediately.”

The lightsaber jabbed into the droid’s head. “Stay on the ground,” Chak spat as he ripped the saber back out.

“Chak, your daughter,” Lyrilis gasped.

He raised his boot over Switch’s head and stamped down on it once, twice, and then a final time. Twisted metal and shattered electronics spilled out from several cracks in the plating. “It had to be done,” he said. “This monster has made enough trouble for innocent people in the galaxy.” His orange blade retreated back into its hilt and Chak looked out to the Star Destroyer. “I’ll deal with whatever repercussions there may be. I always do.”

I stood up slowly, my lungs still trying to fill themselves again. I retrieved my blaster from the ground and wiped the dust that had settled on it. “Bzzt--” the comm in my ear came to life. “--need all units at the forward camp--bzzt--perial units spotted.” The transmission was crackled with interference. It was likely all they could get past Imperial jammers.

Hubri wiped the trickle of blood from her forehead. She still clung to the holocron, glowing green through the last of the dust yet to fall back down. “We need to give this to the Witches,” she insisted.

Lyrilis nodded. She pressed a finger to her comm. “Roger that, Captain Adrian. We’re heading back immediately.”

“Bzzt--vern Squadron, copy that.”

Lyrilis turned to Hubri. “We’ll retrace our steps. We’ll head back through the village that way.”

* * *

The dry grass beneath our feet was a welcome change from the rocks in the canyon. We marched through most of the night, resting for only a few hours before picking up our march again. Occasionally, the whir of TIE fighters would buzz overhead, still far off in the distance it seemed, though we were heading directly for their flight paths.

Something was off as we approached the Witches’ village. The hub of life was desolate and sinister, even from kilometers away. “Smoke on the horizon,” Gordon pointed out. Hubri cursed and ran ahead. Lyrilis called after her and we hurried to follow her.

Hubri stopped at the edge of the village. Canvas was still on fire in places; the rest of the tents were charred heaps. Metal beams were mangled and twisted. Bodies, burned and charred, littered the streets. “Bombs,” Lyrilis whispered, horrified. “They bombed it.”

“Damn it,” Hubri murmured, barely audible. She fell to her knees, staring at the carnage. She beat the ground with her fist. “Damn it!” she yelled, hitting the grass again.

Lyrilis knelt next to her, keeping a careful distance from her anger. “They’ll pay,” she said. “They’ll pay for every life they’ve taken without regard.”

Maya stared at the ruined buildings, shock in her eyes. “People lived here?” she whispered to me.

“Yes,” I whispered back. “Just yesterday, it was full of people.” Anger welled up inside me, overflowing and white-hot. I wanted to yell as I imagined the TIE fighters flying over the tents, the bombs going off. The emotion collapsed and replaced itself with an even more overwhelming helplessness. “We couldn’t do anything to help.”

A presence manifested behind us--a wound in the Force that I recognized. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” his deep voice spoke. “The destruction.”

Hubri stood up to face him. Her eyes burned with fury as they bore into the figure from the temple, as dark and horrifying in the daylight as in the dim, musty lighting under the planet. “You,” Hubri spat.

“They were inferior,” he continued. “They were no loss to this galaxy.”

“They were--!” Hubri began, her voice catching in her throat.

Lyrilis’s pike ignited and she carefully stepped forward, her blade trained on the monster of a man. “How much destruction does the Empire want?” she asked.

“I’m not certain,” he responded. “The whole galaxy, if necessary, I suppose. But I… I desire power.” He clenched his fist, a spark of lightning arcing between his knuckles. “I desire the Force.”

Lyrilis’s stance tightened. “I can give you the Force, if that’s what you want.”

“You’re not strong enough to take me,” he dismissed her threat. “Not by yourself. That friend in your pocket. He and I are the same age. Curious he puts his trust in someone so young and reckless.”

“Enough,” Hubri said. She walked towards the man, her fists clenched. Lyrilis stuck the end of her pike in front of Hubri, stopping her from going any closer. “So you killed them?” she asked. “You slaughtered my people and now you brush it off? Because they were ‘no loss’?”

The figure was silent.

Tears fell from Hubri’s eyes. Her voice grew to a shout. “You--the Empire! The Empire kills whoever doesn’t benefit them and their galaxy! If that’s true, then kill me! There’s no place for me in your galaxy.” She pushed Lyrilis’s pike out of the way. “Kill me!”

“Hubri, don’t,” I whispered, reaching a hand out to her shoulder.

She ripped her shoulder from my grip. “No!” she yelled. Her eyes, full of venom and anger, glared into the shadowy figure. “I swear on my life, I will kill you,” she said, her voice softer but no less poisonous. “I will tear you and your Empire down. When that happens, remember this village and the lives you took. You’re a demon.”

The figure gave a short, unsettling laugh. “Maybe I am, Witch.” His body began to dissolve into black dust, disappearing into a nonexistent wind, as he had before.

Hubri’s shoulders slumped, the tension in her body releasing. Her tears came back, more than before. She cried loudly, angrily.

Gordon cleared his throat. “I looked around the village,” he said. “The priestess lady, her body isn’t here.”

“It’s possible a number of your people escaped,” Chak agreed.

Hubri sniffled and squared her jaw, trying to swallow her sobs. Tears still fell from her puffy eyes. “Of course that hag escaped,” she said, her voice shaky. “She’s too stubborn to die.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and looked up at the Star Destroyer, still inching across the sky. She ran her hand over the holocron, clipped to her belt. “Let’s keep moving. They need us at the rebel camp.”


	19. The Battle of Dathomir

The camp was in an uproar when we returned. Our hike back had been quiet, though tense. The hurried anxiety that drove the camp was a dizzying change of pace, but I didn’t hate it.

Pilots and mechanics worked together to service an array of starfighters--including the new Incom X-Wing fighters, now painted with blue and purple accents. The shiny new ships sat nestled between beaten-up transports and Clone Wars-era fighters that saw their better days years ago.

“Wyverns,” Captain Adrian greeted us curtly. He was disheveled, though for him that only meant his collar was unpressed. “We were beginning to doubt if you’d received our transmission.”

“Apologies,” Lyrilis replied. “We were quite a ways away.”

“No matter, I’m sure you came here as fast as you could,” the captain dismissed. “We were--I was more concerned that you all had perished out there. We can celebrate your survival later, however. I need you all to find positions--”

An old, wrinkled woman hobbled up beside the captain, her posture hunched. Rice fell from between her fingers. “Ah, the coward managed to return,” she cackled. Several women in green and red robes followed behind her. Witches. I recognized the three that took us captive.

Hubri’s face lit up with relief before turning back to cold, uncaring stone. She unclipped the holocron from her belt and held it in front of her. “Priestess, we brought the relic.”

“Hmmm,” the priestess examined it in Hubri’s hand. “I do not need that yet.”

Hubri’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. “But you sent us to--”

“ _Yet_ , my dear,” she repeated herself. “Prophecies are specific. First, the surface of the planet must turn to glass and life must perish. Then we use the holocron.”

“I--” Hubri’s voice caught in her throat. “Life _must_ perish? I thought we were preventing that!”

The priestess cackled as the rice clattered in her hands again. “You shall see. We all shall.” She cackled again and hobbled away from the captain’s side.

Hubri shook her head and looked to the Witches. “Is the Red Hills Clan joining this fight?” she asked.

The frontmost Witch nodded--Kira, I recalled. “Yes, we are. We will not let the Empire attempt to destroy our way of life again.”

“I would…” Hubri began. “I would like to fight alongside you, if you’d have me.”

Kira smiled and held a hand out to Hubri. “We would love to have our sister back.” Hubri shook her hand and gave a rare smile.

 

Lyrilis and I were assigned to join Lucky Squadron for the ensuing conflict. Gordon was sent to a group of commandos after being denied as a request to join Salak’s fighting group. “Too specialized,” the captain told him. Fry volunteered to operate one of the X-Wings in an astromech capacity--a prospect that made me nervous. There’s a reason starships have organic pilots, but I kept my hesitation to myself.

“You wizards ready to join the best squadron on the _Resurgence_?” Mitch asked, handing me a rifle before grabbing one for himself.

I looked over the rifle, familiarizing myself with the weapon. I’d never held one, let alone fired one. “The best?” I asked, raising my eyebrow as I looked down the sights. It was an old blaster. The energy pack rattled inside slightly like it didn’t fit quite right.

“Wyvern Squadron is a close second,” Mitch laughed.

Avache slung his own rifle over his shoulder. “Lyrilis, you should act as our leader.”

Lyrilis looked surprised, holding a rifle gingerly, as if she were afraid it would go off just by touching it. “Leader?” she asked. “I don’t know about that.”

“You were a Jedi in the Clone Wars, weren’t you?” Mitch questioned. “You kids were commanding clones all the time.”

“I didn’t see much combat,” Lyrilis replied. “I never had a clone battalion--”

“Nonsense!” Mitch interrupted her, handing Jameson a rifle and medic kit. The Twi’lek kid had been quiet since we arrived, his eyes wide. He stared at the rifle, blank. “You’ll do great, kid,” Mitch whispered to Jameson. “You, too, wizard.”

The signal to march blared over our comms: “Move out. Imperial walkers marching east. TIE fighters incoming east. Move out.” The signal repeated again.

“Well, let’s get a move on then,” Mitch declared.

Avache pushed his glasses back up on the hook of his nose. “I wish you wouldn’t sound so eager.” The trio started walking to the edge of the camp.

Lyrilis set her rifle down and adjusted the strap of her pike on her shoulder. “You’re not bringing the rifle?” I asked.

“I’d be a liability trying to fire that thing,” she forced out a painful laugh. I could sense her anxiety.

“Come on,” I said, walking along after Lucky Squadron. “It’ll be fine.”

I didn’t believe myself. I doubted she did either.

 

I stared down the sights of the rifle, watching the approaching army, still a good distance from the trenches the rebels dug in preparation. The sky was darkening over the field of dry grass and tiny purple wildflowers, threatening rain. Few trees dotted the landscape, standing as squat as the rune-covered rocks that jutted from the grass.

The army continued their march towards us. Tension rose up from each of the six or so trenches, hanging over us. I watched battalions of white-clad stormtroopers walk in unison, four AT-AT walkers looming behind them and rattling the ground with each step, despite their distance.

“Didn’t realize we were _this_ famous amongst the Empire,” Mitch chuckled.

“Doubtful,” Lyrilis shook her head. “They probably just don’t know what to expect. A diseased, abandoned Star Destroyer crashed into the planet. That doesn’t happen under normal circumstances.”

I looked up from the barrel of my rifle and to the graying sky above as the whine of TIE Fighter engines grew louder. “Engaging enemy starfighters,” a pilot’s voice announced over the open comm channel. Seconds later, streaks of red laser bolts raced towards the formation of black starfighters. The TIEs retaliated, green lasers firing on the X-Wings racing toward them.

Looking back down the sights, I watched a squad of stormtroopers break off from the main army. “Stormtroopers incoming,” Lyrilis said beside me. “Don’t let them get into the trenches.”

I switched the rifle into autofire and aimed for the squad marching towards us. I fired the rifle and several short shots burst from the barrel, spraying at the stormtroopers. The end of the rifle recoiled into my shoulder, pushing back against me with more force than I anticipated.

The trenches lit up with the sight and sound of blaster fire. Stormtroopers returned fire on the rebels. I aimed again at the approaching squad of white plastoid armor and fired, bracing the rifle more than before. I watched as a stormtrooper fell to the ground.

I looked up from the rifle in time to watch a stormtrooper lob a device towards our trench. “Grenade!” I yelled out, ducking my head under the wall of dirt. I felt the grenade explode prematurely over our heads, a wave of heat and energy passing over us from above. Shrapnel lodged itself into the dirt, missing us by a miracle.

“Watch out for explosives!” Lyrilis shouted. “Who knows how many more they have. Be prepared to abandon the trench.”

I peeked my rifle up again over the trench wall. I felt a shock pass through me as the troopers ran for our trench, much closer than I sensed them. I fired my rifle at them, a reaction more than a conscious decision. They were close enough now to smell the burnt plastoid as they fell.

A TIE exploded over our heads, catching another in the explosion. An X-Wing shot out from behind the cloud of rancid smoke, victorious. “Yee-HAW!” Fry cried over the comm.

“Nice!” I shouted, watching the debris fall above a clump of stormtroopers, scrambling to get out of the way.

“Heads down!” Lyrilis shouted over the sound of crashing metal. I ducked down, pulling my head down under my arms. I sensed the grenade land in the trench behind us. My blood turned to ice before heat passed over us. Lyrilis slammed into me with the force of the blast and we both were pinned against the wall of the trench.

I regained my senses after only a few seconds, save for my shot hearing. Lyrilis was slumped against me, limp. My breath picked up with the knot in my stomach. I reached for her arm, pressing my fingertips against her wrist. I could barely feel her pulse over the rush of blood through my own shaky hand, but gently, I could feel a soft _ba-bump, ba-bump_ pushing back against my fingers.

I let out a breath, but I still felt anxiety wrap itself tightly in my chest. I gently maneuvered her to a slumped seated position against the trench wall. A cut bled on her face, red trickling down her chin. I yelled over my shoulder, “Jameson!” He stared at me with wide, frightened eyes. “You have the medic kit!”

His eyes went wider with realization before hurrying over. “Sorry, sorry,” he mumbled.

Mitch and Avache, spared from the blast, peeked their rifles over the trench. “Leave Jameson to her, Meena!” Mitch yelled over the din of warfare. “We need your help!”

I nodded, still looking at Lyrilis. I ran back to the trench wall and set my rifle back in front of me, looking down the sights. The AT-ATs still crawled toward us, each step long and painful. I fired at the stormtroopers, stepping over the bodies of their own. I fired round after round, trying everything I could to hold them off. I landed several good hits, but I wasn’t bothering to keep count. I could barely focus on the blaster in front of me as it was.

There was a stir in the Force next to me. I let out the breath I was holding.

“She’s coming around, sirs!” Jameson shouted over the blaster fire.

My relief distracted me for a moment longer than I should’ve allowed. I watched as a stormtrooper broke toward us and leaped into the trench, my reaction lagging behind the danger playing in front of me. The trooper turned in my direction and raised his rifle to bring it down over my head. I ducked out of the way and raised my rifle to fire on him.

 _Click_ . The rifle jammed. _Click click_. I cursed and dodged another attempt from the trooper to hit me with the butt of his gun. I whacked the energy pack as hard as I could, just hoping to keep the trooper distracted from Lyrilis and Jameson long enough to kill him. I aimed my rifle again and fired. A bolt of red flew from the barrel and sunk into the neck of the stormtrooper. He clattered to the ground.

“Miss Lyrilis,” I heard Jameson say behind me, “can you hear me?”

I glanced over at her and Jameson for a second as I settled my rifle on the dirt. She was breathing deeply and the gash was bandaged. Bitterly, I sensed away from her and down the sights of the rifle.

“It’s… It’s just Lyrilis,” she responded. “Please don’t call me ‘miss’.” Her words ran together, but they were coherent.

Anxiety escaped me for a moment before I fired my blaster again at another group of stormtroopers, still quite far to be a threat, but I wasn’t keen on having another intruder in our trench. I watched as all five suits of armor fell to the ground, but not by my shots.

I ducked my head beneath the trench’s surface and knelt next to Lyrilis. “Are you okay?” I held out a hand to help her to her feet.

She took my hand and groaned as she stood up. “A grenade blew up next to me,” she replied, flat.

“Point taken.”

The sound of the X-Wings passed overhead again and shots landed close to us, shaking the ground and throwing up dirt and pieces of charred armor.

For a moment, as the starfighters lifted into the atmosphere for another pass, the battlefield was quiet. Not silent--the approaching crash of the AT-ATs’ steps still sounded in the distance. I peeked my head out of the trench and looked out to the mechanical beasts, marching out of the dark gray sky. The Star Destroyer overhead moved to eclipse where the red sun barely could push its way through the darkening clouds. Over the metallic smell of blaster fire and churned topsoil, rain lingered, threatening to pour down.

Mitch’s eyes remained locked on the Star Destroyer above us. “Well this is odd,” he remarked.

“What is?” I asked, looking up to the ship above us.

“For one,” Mitch started, “they normally start shooting by now.”

Jameson stood up from his scared, crouched position against the wall. “So is it over?”

Avache shook his head. “Far from it. They’re planning something.”

“All units, report in,” Captain Adrian’s voice came over the comm.

Gordon’s voice came first. “My commandos have taken heavy casualties, but we’ll fight this to the end.”

“All alive over here,” Hubri responded.

“We’re battered,” Lyrilis spoke up, “but standing, all of us.”

A few more squadrons responded, mostly positive replies. “What about our starfighters?” the captain asked.

“Lost one,” Fry responded. “Rest still operational.”

“Understood,” the captain replied. “Hold your positions, everyone. If the Imperials make a move, engage. Otherwise, stay where you are until my command. Out.”

I took in a deep breath, attempting to center myself. “This is unnerving,” I whispered.

“I agree,” Avache nodded. “I don’t know why they haven’t started a planetary bombardment.”

I watched the Star Destroyer, dread creeping out of my chest into my throat as I waited for something to happen. A small white shuttle glided out from the ventral hangar, flanked by a squadron of TIE fighters. Immediately, the X-Wings flew towards them. “Stop that shuttle!” one of the pilots called over the comms. The starfighters raced for the newcomers, opening fire as they approached. A TIE fighter veered off, its wing on fire, before exploding. The X-Wings peeled off in different directions, avoiding collision with the shuttle and its escort.

I felt a shift in the Force. One of the X-Wings stopped in place, banking around the shuttle. It hung there, frozen in the atmosphere. A metallic screeching pierced through the air as the wings began to bend and crumple. “Eject! Eject!” someone called into the open comm channel. The starfighter fell, unable to fly. It crashed into the ground, a good way off from the rows of trenches, and exploded, adding its scrap metal to the ground.

“Do you sense that?” Lyrilis asked me. “In the shuttle?”

I sensed upwards and felt cold dread pounding in my chest. “The man from the village,” I replied. Icy and hateful, his presence lowered in the shuttle, landing at the helm of the trenches. The ramp lowered. A black shadow--a scar--walked out, a sanguine red lightsaber ignited in his hand. He raised his other hand, statuesque.

Laser bolts fell from above, shot from the cannons of the Star Destroyer. I ducked down into the trench, my hands over my head and neck. The ground shook first, then the deafening sounds of bombardment followed, catching up to the bolts of plasma that sunk into the soil, throwing it up as charred ash that landed in our trench. I lost my balance in the shaking, unable to get back to my feet. I crawled back to the wall through the tremors, hoping for any kind of cover. I whispered a prayer that the dirt wall wouldn’t collapse onto me.

The cannons stopped their assault. I lifted my head and reached my senses out. The dark figure still stood, unscathed by the bombardment. I felt so much less life around me.

Lyrilis uncurled from over Jameson and stayed kneeling beside him. He looked up to the sky, his eyes red and his shoulders shaking. I looked to Mitch and Avache on my other side. Mitch was slumped against the dirt wall, disoriented but conscious and Avache by his side. “Toss me Jameson’s medical kit,” Avache said. I picked up the discarded kit by the kid’s feet and handed it to Avache. “Thanks,” he whispered.

“Why’d they stop?” I asked.

Avache shrugged, pulling a bacta injection from the kit. “Normally they unleash hell until everything is obliterated. Never seen the Empire exercise restraint.”

“Exactly.”

I looked away, wincing as Avache inserted the needle. I turned to Lyrilis and Jameson, kneeling down next to them. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered. “We’ll all make it out.”

I felt a raindrop land on my nose, wetting my eye covering. I looked up to the sky and watched the X-Wings--only three now--barrel across the dark sky, charging at the squadron of TIE fighters. “X-Wings, take out those TIEs and then see what you can do against those AT-ATs,” Captain Adrian said. “We need to disable them before they’re in firing range of the trenches.”

“There’s no victory, captain,” Hubri replied, defeat in her voice. “I want the Empire off my planet as much as anyone, but--”

“Hold out for now,” the captain ordered. “If the starfighters can take out the AT-ATs, there’s a chance.”

I couldn’t help but agree with Hubri. I could feel the figure standing there, nagging at the back of my mind. The Star Destroyer still hung in the atmosphere with enough firepower to level the meadow we sat in.

“I have a plan,” Lyrilis declared. She looked at me. “Meena, you’re in charge now.”

“I--” I stammered. “What?”

The Force swelled around her, energy accumulating like a bomb. She climbed the wall of the trench, standing in the open air, and ignited her pike. Raindrops sizzled as they touched her blade. Suddenly, she shot up into the air, jumping several meters before landing on a swooping X-Wing.

“Gah!” Fry cried into his open comm. “Lyrilis?”

“Get me to those TIEs!” she responded, the wind roaring loudly in her comm.

“Lyrilis!” I called out. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I can help take the starfighters out!” she responded. “It’s better than sitting in a trench.”

I gave a nervous chuckle, staring in shock as the X-Wing carried her off toward the TIE fighters. “You’re absolutely insane.”

“Maybe!”

A smile flickered across my face, and I banished it as quickly as I felt the corners of my mouth turn upwards. It was harder to banish the knot in my chest that tightened as I watched the starfighter bank back around for another pass at the TIE fighters. Anxiety or captivation, I wasn’t sure and I didn’t have the time to sort through either.

“Where’s the other wizard?” Mitch sputtered, now standing, though leaning heavily on his rifle.

I pointed up to the sky, following the path of her and Fry’s X-Wing. “You just missed her.”

“The hell is she doing up there?” Mitch asked.

“Something stupid,” Avache grumbled.

“No,” Jameson spoke up. He clutched his rifle closer to his chest, giving a weak smile. “She’s doing something brave.”

“Damn right she is,” Mitch smiled. “But don’t get any ideas, kid.”

The ground rocked beneath us, nearly knocking Mitch back down. Two more rumbles rolled through the ground. “Mortars,” Avache said. 

I looked over the wall of dirt as one of the AT-ATs fired its laser cannons at the edge of the battlefield, the shot landing just ahead of the dark figure. “It’s not going to be long before they’re in firing range of this trench,” I murmured. I tapped my comm. “They’re getting awfully close, captain.”

“I have to agree,” he sighed. “We’re not big enough for this kind of victory yet. All units, retreat to the troop transports. X-Wings, rendezvous with the _Resurgence_. Out.”

“You heard the boss,” Fry said over his comm. “X-Wings, retreat.”

“What about you?” one of the pilots responded. “We’re following you.”

“Don’t worry about me, partner. Take care of yourself.”

There was a moment of quiet before I watched the two trailing starfighters peel out of formation. “Very well. May the Force be with you.”

“She already is.”

A large burst of flames erupted from Fry’s X-Wing, engulfing an oncoming TIE fighter. I suppressed another smile.

“You all retreat,” Gordon’s voice came over the comm. “I have a feeling that bad guy is going to make it hard for you all if you try to run.”

“Gordon, are you stupid?” Hubri spat. “He’ll kill you.”

“Better me than you all,” Gordon replied. Silence fell over us.

Lyrilis’s voice was quiet over the rushing wind. “Gordon?”

I felt raindrops falling harder onto my messy hair, wetting my dirty skin. “Gordon?” I echoed. My fingertips felt cold.

I sensed for Gordon across the battlefield. He ran forward towards the figure, a stomping force of movement, his axe in his single hand. Suddenly, he stopped in place and I felt cold hatred emanate with terrible power. Purple lightning sparked in the distance.

A hand on my shoulder shook me from my head. “Meena?” Mitch asked. “You here?”

“Sorry Mitch, it’s just…” I tried to forget the impression of evil in my mind. “Wizard things.”

Avache looked to me, his eyes narrowed his worry and curiosity. “What did you see?”

“Gordon is fighting him,” I whispered. “He will--”

“Gordon, please come in,” Lyrilis begged over the comm. Flames burst through the sky again and another TIE fell in a column of smoke, shaking the ground with the mortar’s rhythmic collisions.

“Retreat immediately,” Captain Adrian’s voice called. “Get out of there!”

“I’m not leaving without Gordon!” Lyrilis yelled over the wind. “No way in hell!”

“Leave him or you all will die!”

“Leave me,” Gordon managed, his voice strained.

I took in a tight, painful breath. “Avache, Mitch. Get Jameson out of here. Get him to the transports.”

Avache’s eyes narrowed again. “What about you?”

“I’m not leaving without Lyrilis,” I said. “Not until I know she’s safe.”

“Nobody leaves unless we all do,” Mitch declared.

I looked to Avache, hoping for reason. “Please, get Jameson out of here.”

He took in a long breath and placed a hand on my shoulder. I returned the gesture, though it felt too final. I hoped it wasn’t, for either of us. “I understand. May the Force be with you, Meena.”

“Be safe,” I said. “May the Force be with you all.”

“Wait, wait,” Mitch argued. “I’m not leaving! I don’t leave friends behind either.”

Avache nodded to Mitch. “I’ll see you on the ship, then.”

“Get him back safe,” Mitch agreed.

Avache hoisted Jameson up the trench wall before climbing over himself. They hurried off into the increasing rain, back towards the rebel camp.

“You can leave, Mitch,” I said, climbing up the wall of the trench, now slick as the dirt turned to mud. “I’m just waiting for her.”

Mitch shook his head and climbed out after me. “Those walkers aren’t so tough. And besides, I’ve always been a sucker for love stories.”

I felt my face turn red under my eye covering. “That’s not what-- No, that’s--” I stammered.

“Not that I see whatever you see in her,” Mitch continued. “She’s impulsive and hard to read. Not good qualities for a lady.”

The ground shook under us as the mortars grew closer. “That isn’t important,” I dismissed. “Lyrilis, Fry,” I called into the comm, “are you retreating?”

“There’s still another TIE,” Fry argued.

“I need to take them all out,” Lyrilis said, her voice angry.

I shook my head. “Leave it. There’s nothing for us here anymore.”

“But Gordon--”

“He made his decision,” Captain Adrian cut in. “Fry, Lyrilis, I order you to retreat.”

Quiet followed his voice. The rain began falling in sheets, my clothes soaked. “Yes, captain,” Lyrilis murmured, finally.

The X-Wing turned from its pursuit of enemy starfighters and flew towards the ground, a few meters ahead of Mitch and I. Lyrilis jumped off the nose and the starfighter took off into the atmosphere. I ran for her, the ground slick beneath me. She stared past me, at where Gordon and the masked figure struggled.

“Never do that again,” I warned as I reached her, between gasps for air. “You scared the hell out of me.”

Lyrilis looked at me, tearing her attention from the horizon.  “Yeah,” she muttered. “Let’s go.”

We took off running for the camp, keeping our balance as the ground shook from mortars and orbital bombardment. I focused on the back of her head as we ran--purple and black and soaked wet. It was the only thing keeping me from throwing my consciousness behind me with sick curiosity.

A disturbed feeling passed through me and nausea stopped me in place. A ripple of pain in the Force. Lyrilis stopped in front of me and turned back. She stared, her eyebrows perched with fear. “Did you--”

I nodded.

Her lip quivered. Mine did, too.

Mitch lowered his head. “Come on, kids,” he said, uncharacteristically quiet. “Don’t stop now.”

Lyrilis took off again and I followed her, outrunning AT-AT mortars and death. Rain poured down on us, filling my boots. My hands were cold.

Everything was cold.


	20. Part Three

**The Monster Who Makes Monsters**


	21. Strahd

The _Resurgence_ was in a furor when the transport shuttle landed in the hangar. The injured were hurried to the medbays; the seriously injured were met with doctors. I, quietly, suggested Lyrilis join them when I saw her limp out of her seat and into the hangar. “No,” she said. “I can wait. There are worse injuries than mine.”

Hubri was quiet, but raging, as we walked to the bridge, where Captain Adrian instructed us to meet him. Fry was already there, he informed us. We walked, silent, through the sterile halls. “You felt--” Hubri finally spoke up.

“Yes,” Lyrilis interrupted her, her tone harsh. “Of course.”

Hubri’s eyes narrowed. She gave a huff and walked faster down the bright white hallways of the frigate. I was too exhausted to try to keep up.

The bridge was quiet--the _Resurgence_ was already safe in hyperspace. It was a disorienting peace. I noticed the ringing in my ears over the low drone of the engines. Only a handful of technicians sat at their consoles, only the most essential. The rest were likely in the medbay, getting patched up with everyone else.

Adrian sat in the captain’s chair, looking over a console. His eyes flitted over to us and his posture straightened. “Wyvern Squadron,” he addressed as he stood up, his voice muffled in my deafened ears. He gestured over to Fry, sitting rather quietly in front of a console. Fry stood up and joined us, wordlessly.

“Captain Adrian,” Lyrilis replied.

“I am…” he paused for a moment. “I am sorry for what happened down there. Salak and Gordon were true warriors. There will be a service for them and all those we lost tomorrow.”

My eyebrows knit in shock. “Salak--”

“Salak’s gone, too?” Lyrilis asked, finishing the question that stuck in my throat.

The captain nodded slowly. “I will spare the details, but he died a hero, as Gordon did.”

I felt the iron weight of everything that happened fall onto me, all at once. My chest and throat tightened, threatening to choke me and take me with them, but the emotion didn’t come. Shock still numbed my hands and my mind.

“Do you have the artifact?” the captain broke the silence. Hubri pulled the holocron from her belt and held it out to him without a word. He took it in his hand cautiously. “All that death for a shiny toy,” he sighed, placing it on a table.

“It’s not a toy,” Hubri warned, her voice growing impatient. “It belongs to the Witches.”

“It will go back to them,” Adrian assured her. “We will give it back and take them and their priestess back to Dathomir once the danger has passed.”

“Did the Witches agree to this?” Hubri pressed further.

The captain nodded. “I just finished speaking with the priestess.” Silence fell over us again as we waited for Hubri to speak again, but she remained silent. The captain lowered his eyes and dropped his posture. “If there’s nothing else, you all are dismissed. I have a lot of squads to meet with today.”

 

I returned to my quarters after a shower, my body and hair clean, but my clothes were still soaked with rain and mud. I peeled the wet fabric from my body. I couldn’t stand the feeling on my skin any longer. I took a breath and sat down, my weight coming off my feet finally. I avoided looking at the abuse they’d endured. I didn’t want to see the blood or bruises.

I looked up from the floor and I felt my wet hair brush against my back. A twinge of annoyance surfaced up from under everything else. I stood back up onto my feet, despite their protests, and began searching for my grooming kit. I opened drawers in a manic hurry. I set the kit on the table and propped up the small mirror next to my blaster on the nightstand. 

I sat down at the table and looked at myself in the mirror for the first time in several days. I looked like hell. My skin was placid and patched with bruises on my face and neck, burst blood vessels that were starting to turn yellow. My orbitals were puffy and dark from exhaustion. My hair fell past my shoulders and down my chest. I let it get far too long. I picked up the scissors from the table and raised them to my hair.

* * *

I stood in a pool of water, the surface just licking at my chin. I felt shackles on my wrist and ankles, chaining me down to the floor beneath me. The room around me was dark and infinite. Directly in front of me, the black, cruel mask of the dark figure on Dathomir. The eyes of his mask felt like they bore into my mind. They invaded my thoughts and my existence in the Force.

The room was silent, and still. I waited for the chains on my wrists to pull me down and submerge my nose and mouth in the water and drown. I waited for the mask’s owner to appear behind it and kill me. I waited for anything to happen. Nothing did. I was stuck in a moment of horror and I couldn’t escape.

It was as though days had passed. My feet never ached, nor did my body. I wasn’t even sure if I could feel the water around me, either. It wasn’t hot or cold. I was in a state of limbo, staring at the mask of the creature that would kill me, I was sure of it. 

I had nothing but my thoughts.

* * *

I woke up, my skin balmy with sweat. I sat upright frantically, my head aching with the sudden motion. I caught my racing breath and looked around the room. My clothes were strewn on the floor and a clump of auburn hair sat on the table, scissors next to it.

My hands moved to my hair, running through it. It barely fell to my chin. _Right,_ I thought. _It was getting too long._

I slid out of bed and looked at my reflection in the mirror. It was short and choppy and a bit of a mess, but I would grow into it.

 

I walked to the mess hall in fresh clothes. The pants were loose and awkward-fitting but I didn’t care enough to ask anyone for a smaller size. My clothes would be back from laundry soon enough.

I grabbed a tray of food and spotted Lyrilis sitting at a table, alone, amongst the crowded mess hall. I set my tray down next to her and sat down. “Good morning,” I started.

She jumped a little when I spoke. “Oh!” she yelped, her back straightening before wincing with pain. “Sorry, you startled me.”

“Sorry,” I echoed. “My fault.”

Lyrilis’s shoulders slumped over her food again. “You cut your hair,” she pointed out.

“Mm. It was too long.” I took a bite of my bread.

She gave a small smile. “I like it. It suits you.” I felt redness prickle in the tips of my ears and I smiled back just as tightly, unsure of how to reply. I didn’t feel much like conversation anyways. We ate our breakfast in silence for a few moments before Lyrilis spoke up again. “Are you okay?” Her voice was soft. She pushed her tray away and took a sip of her coffee.

I stared down at my food, deciding what to say. I knew--we both knew--the answer already. It became a matter of what I would admit, and what she would admit in turn. “I… didn’t sleep well,” I said, finally.

“Neither did I,” she replied. “I had a nightmare and I couldn’t lie down comfortably. I think one of my ribs is broken.”

“You should go to the medbay.”

She sighed. “After the service.”

I wordlessly cursed. _Yeah,_ I thought _. That_.

 

Fry was waiting for us outside the mess hall. “Just got back from the mechanics,” he announced. “Like I’m factory fresh.”

“Glad to hear it,” Lyrilis dismissed, walking past him and down the hall.

“Ya don’t sound it,” Fry argued.

“Fry,” I warned him. He hustled to catch up with us and began whistling a horrid high-pitched melody. “Fry,” I repeated.

We turned the corner and walked towards the meeting hall, following behind others doing the same. I dreaded the whole thing. I wanted to rest, not grieve--at least not so publicly.

“Heard you all are the folks who left your squadmate behind,” a voice called from over us. I looked in the direction of the voice. Leaning against the wall was a tall man, nearly eight feet and barely able to fit in the corridors of the frigate. His skin and his roughly dozen or so headtails were green and his large, bug-like eyes were a pupil-less warm gray color. A Feeorin.

Lyrilis stopped in her tracks at the comment, a quiet fury beginning to burn in her. “You’re talking to us?” she asked.

“Sure am.” the Feeorin responded.

Lyrilis turned on her heel and stepped close to him. She tilted her head all the way back to meet his judgemental gaze. “You try facing a Sith like that,” she spat. “You try it. I’d like to see how you’d hold up.”

“I’d never be stupid enough to try,” he laughed.

Lyrilis’s fist clenched up. “Gordon was brave!” she yelled. “He was braver than you! He sacrificed himself so we could all escape with our lives!” People glanced over at the scene as they walked past, whispers roaring over Lyrilis’s shouting.

“I commend him for his honor,” the Feeorin said. “But he died an idiot down there.”

Lyrilis took a sharp breath in and wound up a punch. I moved forward, trying to restrain her before she did something stupid. “This jerk isn’t worth it,” I cut in. “Let’s get inside.”

Lyrilis’s muscles remained tight for a moment longer before relaxing, her arm dropping in my grasp. “You’re right, Meena.” She wrenched free from my grip and slipped into the meeting hall.

Fry mimicked clearing his throat. “Sorry about that, Mister…”

“Strahd,” he responded, seemingly unfazed.

“Mister Strahd,” Fry continued, “understand that she’s been through some minor hells of late. Take no offense.”

“You a protocol droid in the wrong plating?” Strahd asked.

“Me?” Fry asked. “Oh no, I’m…”

I walked inside the meeting hall, not caring to socialize with anyone like him. I didn’t care to socialize much with anyone.

The meeting hall was long and wide, white and smelling faintly like a cleaner over the metallic smell most ships have, like the rest of the _Resurgence_. The seats were sparsely filled, but people still sat, silent. The voluntary silence was heavy in the air. Lyrilis sat next to Lucky Squadron, a couple of rows from the front. Mitch had bandages on his face, a bruise spreading out from underneath it. The other two seemed unscathed, aside from Jameson’s wide eyes.

I took a seat next to Lyrilis. Her scowl softened only slightly as she acknowledged me.

“Don’t worry about him,” I whispered.

Lyrilis sat forward, hunched over with her elbows on her knees. “Who does he think he is? Judging us like that.”

“Don’t let him get to you.”

Lyrilis stared down at the floor. “I guess.”

Hubri slid into the seat next to me. She was silent and her face was focused and cold, but I could sense the turmoil in her. She looked as tired as the rest of us.

Captain Adrian finally walked to the front of the meeting hall and the few that dared to whisper into the quiet hushed themselves. His voice replaced the whispers, clear in the small auditorium. “Yesterday,” he began, “we were faced with our largest confrontation with the Empire to date. We’ve faced hardships in the past, but none on this scale. Unfortunately, we failed. We lost many good people.” He paused, his clear voice wavering as it fell. “We lost Private First-class Tallson of the Alderaanian military. We lost…”

I dropped my vision to my hands, clasped in front of me. I heard loud sighs and sniffles and the quiet stifling of sobbing around me. Occasional shouts of honor would follow a name. More often was gut-wrenching silence.

“We lost Private Salak of Wyvern Squadron,” the captain said. The name brought my attention back and I looked back up at the front of the auditorium. The captain looked up from the datapad he read from. “And finally, we lost Gordon A’reth, also of Wyvern Squadron. Gordon was the reason many of you are still sitting here. He bravely took on the Sith on that battlefield to allow the rest of us to escape. We should all follow his example of bravery and self-sacrifice, should we be called to it.”

Captain Adrian’s voice fell quiet and the room was oppressively silent. I watched a man cry in the row in front of me, tears streaking down his face. A clear and outward sign of sadness so overwhelming that the body has to rid itself of it. Watching this man wipe his tears onto his hands, it made sense to me why Miraluka are stereotyped as emotionless. I wanted to know, briefly, the catharsis of tears.

Captain Adrian broke the silence after a few respectful but pregnant moments, returning my attention to his speech. “To pivot, we are investigating the Sith on Dathomir.” His demeanor changed, squaring up his shoulders and his voice carrying more definitive authority. “It is clear he is with the Empire, but he is not one of the Emperor’s dogs as far as we know. I will update everyone according to their levels of clearance as we find out more, but for now, you all are dismissed.”

Voices erupted as people rose from their seats--still just whispers, but the voices layered over one another. Lyrilis and I remained seated next to Lucky Squadron. I watched Hubri as she hurried up and out of the auditorium.

“You lied to me,” Jameson whispered. His eyes were locked on the ground, wide and unmoving. He didn’t sound angry, or sad. There wasn’t any emotion in his words, but the betrayal cut through.

Lyrilis took in a long breath and hung her head parallel to Jameson’s. “I’m sorry,” she whispered back. “I… I wish I hadn’t.”

Jameson looked to Avache next to him. Avache gave Lyrilis and I a sad smile before looking at Jameson. He and Jameson stood up and walked past us, towards the door.

Mitch blew out a breath of air. “Kid’s shell-shocked,” he said, finally. “He doesn’t hate you or anything. He just needs…” He paused. “Time.”

Lyrilis nodded, still facing the ground. “I know.”

He stood up. “Get to the medbay for your limp.” Lyrilis hummed something like acknowledgment. Mitch looked to me. “Make sure she gets to the medbay.” He walked past us and joined Avache and Jameson at the doorway.

The auditorium emptied out gradually, people drifting out in groups. We sat there a moment longer, watching the people leave, their whispers growing louder as they passed through the doorway into the hall. Lyrilis inhaled and straightened her spine before wincing at the movement. “Walk with me to the medbay?”

Her expression, while still solemn, lent itself some relief. The corners of her lips no longer curled downward. I gave a tight smile, trying to match her expression. “Yeah.”

* * *

The _Resurgence_ exited hyperspace two days later, deeper into the Outer Rim and farther beyond the Empire’s checkpoints and scanners. It was announced that the ship would remain drifting for as long as it could, hoping to lose the Empire entirely and allow the battered crew to recover. The Witches were escorted back a few days after reaching our remote destination. Hubri said goodbye to the High Priestess and her fellow Witches, declining their invitation to return with them.

Our injuries healed over the two weeks we spent drifting amongst nothing. My hearing returned. Lyrilis’s ribs mended. Jameson’s smile returned. Slowly, things returned to normal--a new and more lonely normal, but normal.

Missions resumed as squadrons patched up. Wyvern Squadron grew antsy, waiting for our next assignment. In the midst of my dismissiveness, I nearly missed the announcement for us to report to the bridge.

“Finally,” Lyrilis murmured as the elevator doors opened to the bridge.

Captain Adrian and Voss stood, talking over a holoprojection, at the end of the bridge. “We don’t know what this is about,” Hubri spoke up. “But hopefully we’re getting off this ship.”

“Wyverns,” the captain greeted us. “I know it’s been slow since we departed Dathomir, so let us waste no more time.” He turned to face us, but his eyes looked past us and toward the elevator. “First order of business,” he started, holding a hand out to a newcomer, still behind us. I sensed behind myself and found a green-skinned Feeorin--the same Feeorin from the memorial service. “There is a vacancy in Wyvern Squadron. I thought Strahd would be a good fit, so he’s been assigned to your--”

“I would like to speak against this assignment,” Lyrilis interrupted the captain, her voice angry.

The captain’s eyes widened. “I-- Lyrilis, I know it’s been hard since Gordon and Salak’s--”

“This Feeorin insulted our squad. He claimed we were responsible for Gordon’s--” She cut herself off and took a breath. “For losing him.”

Captain Adrian looked to Strahd. “Is this true?”

“I just commented on the outcome of the battle, captain,” Strahd dismissed. “Didn’t mean anything personal by it, but I stand by my opinion.”

The captain sighed. “Well, learn to get along,” he declared. “We needed to fill the vacancy--”

“Lucky Squadron only has three members,” Lyrilis argued. “We can operate with three, plus the droid.”

“Four, she means,” Fry spoke up.

“Try to get along for this mission, at least.” Captain Adrian’s voice was firm, like a father scolding bickering kids. “After that, we can discuss how to proceed. Understood?”

Lyrilis’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “Understood.”

“Understood,” we all echoed, though based on Hubri’s expression, she wasn’t fond of our new squadmate either. Fry was harder to read, but whatever semblance of servitude programming he had left in his logic matrix made sure he got along with about anyone. On my part, I tried to hide my annoyance towards the Feeorin. The guy was loud and pompous, but we had to work with him. I could work with loud and pompous--I’d spent plenty of time around pilots to figure that out--but I wouldn’t keep quiet if he spoke badly about us again.

“Now then,” the captain moved on, turning back to Voss and the holoprojection, “your next mission.”

“Right, yes,” Voss nodded, his back straightening suddenly. He fumbled with a remote and the image of a Hutt displayed on the holo. He cleared his throat and held his chest out, overcorrecting his posture. “When I was in the Imperial Army, I was involved--”

“At ease, Voss,” the captain chuckled. “We’re not so formal here.”

“R-right, sir.” He relaxed his shoulders and dropped the arch in his back until he rested in a more natural standing position, though his posture was still the best on the bridge. “In the Imperial Army, I was involved in a project known as the Sarlacc Project, but I had no knowledge of what the project truly consisted of. I merely pushed papers. What I was aware of was that the project resulted in a large number of deaths, particularly non-humans. I also knew that the Empire was keen on hiding this project from the Senate, using a Hutt as a middleman for credit and resource transfer. His name is Darga the Hutt.

“Darga’s home is in the Cato Neimoidian capital of Zarra. We want Wyvern Squadron to infiltrate his palace and get whatever information you can about this project. Anything and everything is of the utmost importance to piece together what my commanders were doing.”

Captain gave a curt nod. “It is also important, as always, that you keep quiet on who you’re working for. We don’t want Hutts on our bad side, and we don’t want Alderaan or Senator Organa to be compromised.”

“Cato Neimoidia?” Lyrilis asked. “That planet was hit hard during the Clone Wars.”

The captain nodded. “The Trade Federation and the Banking Clan had messy relationships with both the Republic and the Separatists. That kind of loyalty to credits only brought devastation to many Trade Federation worlds.”

Voss spoke up, “Yes, the capital, Zarra, in particular, was quite hard hit. It’s become a hub for criminals and swoop bike gangs, but there is plenty of legitimate business that still goes on. Regardless, you should be careful.”

“So was this Darga connected to the Trade Federation?” Lyrilis asked.

“He’s a Hutt,” Captain Adrian replied. “More than likely, he had a relationship with them, but we know nothing else. Besides, the Trade Federation is no longer active. I don’t think it’ll be terribly relevant.” The captain turned to Voss. “Is that all for you?”

Voss nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“You are dismissed then. I have some things to discuss with Wyvern Squadron.” Voss gave a stiff salute before timid lowering it and hurrying off to the elevator. The captain watched him leave before looking back to us. “Now, Wyverns, I’ve had some people look into the identity of Gordon’s killer. I think you all should know, if you can stomach it.”

Lyrilis’s shoulders raised with her attention. “Who is that monster? An Inquisitor?”

The captain shook his head and changed the image on the holoprojector.  Images of the dark figure, and the mask I had seen in my nightmare, flickered to life. The images cycled through, one by one in a procession of horror. “This is what took Gordon from us. We cross-analyzed this figure with thousands of images from various mythos, historical records, and cultural stories and epics from thousands of cultures across the galaxy. We found this figure showing up all over the galaxy, dating back almost three thousand years. He matched images of gods, demigods, military leaders, and demons. He bears many names in many cultures: the Bearer of the First Mask, the Ancient Hatred, and many more.” His voice became more strict with each sentence.“We do not know his connection to the Empire. It’s possible he has none. Nonetheless, if you are to encounter him, do not engage. Leave with your life. Do you understand me?”

Silence hung over us--oppressive, but fragile. No one dared to shatter it. The images continued to cycle through--cave paintings and ancient art, modern holoimages, recreations of the mask. I looked away.

“Do you understand?” Captain Adrian repeated.

“Yes,” Strahd replied.

“Good.” The captain turned off the holoprojector. “Meet with Chak with the hangar as soon as you’re ready. He will shuttle you to Cato Neimoidia. You are dismissed.”


End file.
